Pride is the problem

Since Mother's Day, I've been worn down, exhausted.  Lupus talk belongs on my lupus blog, but I've virtually given up on that one entirely, so I will just briefly mention a mini-flare I've been having: Intense fatigue.  Headaches.  Aching legs.  Low-level buzzing and numbness in my face and hands.  Pain in my ankles, big toes, and thumbs.  And, last weekend, a burning, stinging butterfly rash across my face.  Also, my eyes bother me a lot.  The combination of eye issues and headaches makes it very difficult to blog, or even read.  Sometimes I find myself lying with my eyes closed on the sofa, listening to sermons on YouTube, in a desperate attempt to do something that is at least somewhat productive.

Sometimes I listen to Tim Keller, or Colin Smith.  Sometimes, when my head hurts too badly to think deeply, I listen to Focus on the Family broadcasts.  Today, I tuned in Rachel Held Evans, a "Christian blogger and speaker" who recently died of brain encephalitis at age 37 and made the news.  I'd never heard of her before she died, but CNN loved her.  I was curious.

RHE (as they seem to call her) confronts the tendency of many churches to hide brokenness under a mask of perfection that is supposed to be a good advertisement for God.  I thought a lot of what she said was good--better, in fact, than I expected.  However, I was troubled, because she blurs the line between male and female.

Why is it that in order to be kind, loving, and accepting--things Jesus absolutely calls us to be--people so often fall into the heresy of equalizing male and female roles, and celebrating homosexuality?  Of course, it logically follows that homosexuality would be fine, if a man and a woman are absolutely equal and interchangeable in every way.  But that whole package of opinions is troubling.

Men and women are not absolutely equal and interchangeable in every way.  There is male, and there is female, and we need both for the continuation of life.  That is a biological, scientific fact.  It's nature.  It's natural.  Homosexuality is not part of the natural continuation of life, and so it is a type of aberration.  Homosexual activity does not lead to the flourishing of a species.  Yes, there are ways to use what we know about science to overcome the obstacles of homosexuality in humans and produce babies anyway, but they are unnatural ways.  In this day when we know that organic food is safer and better, and we avoid eating GMOs like the plague, how can we think that GMO children (or, for that matter, GMO adult transgender persons) are a healthy thing?

The way of righteousness, the way of God, leads to health.  It leads to health and life, peace and joy.

The way of sin leads in the opposite direction, to disease and death, to conflict and despair.

The world is full of death, disease, chaos, conflict, anger, rage, fear, disappointment and despair.  This is the default state of the world ever since the original sin of Adam.  We cannot fix it by condoning it.

We bring relief by recognizing that this is what Jesus came to fix.  Jesus came to turn our eyes towards God, and to indwell us with His Spirit who transforms us so we desire righteousness instead of sin.  Jesus came to clean us from the filth and hopelessness of this world we live in.  Jesus came to purify our hearts.  Jesus did not come to condemn the world; He came so the world could be saved through Him (John 3:17).  We were already chained under condemnation, before Jesus came.  Jesus came to show us the way to freedom, by forgiveness through His blood.

We need forgiveness.  Forgiveness from sin is our most fundamental need.  We need God to forgive us, and then help us, by His everlasting presence in our hearts, to be remade into the image of Christ.  As we have borne the image of the man of dust, so shall we bear the image of the man from heaven (1 Corinthians 15:49).

We must never forget that we are all sinners, every last one of us.  We are all born to a spot on the bench on the death row of eternity, and it is only by the grace of God that any of us ever gains freedom and release from that condemnation.  Yet, Jesus loves us.  He loves us so much that He--the perfect, glorious Creator of the Universe--set His glory aside and came to earth to absorb the necessary wrath of God against sin, in our place, while we were sinners, before we even began to become righteous, because without His grace, we were incapable of becoming righteous.

I do not understand how this works.  In essence, it seems, God divided and conquered.  He divided Himself, so that He could punish sin in Himself, in our place, because He was the only One who could open the scroll, the only One who could face down sin and defeat it.

Part of sin is rebelling against God's righteous designs for creation, creation before the fall into sin, when He created male and female, to work together and help each other and care for each other in unity and love, to extend the life of humanity together.  If we love God, we must love His ways and His designs, the way trees grow outward with expanding branches, and water ripples down a mountainside, and daylight follows the dark of night, and both sunshine and rain make the flowers bloom.  We should not try to fight against the patterns and the seasons and the life cycles of creation.  We should embrace them, sway and flow with them, rejoice in them.

Loving God's creation, His patterns, and His ways requires humility.  It requires humility for us to admit that He is the unfathomably great Creator of all things: the origin, the source, the artist, the designer, the producer.  He made it all, and He knows how it works best.  He wants us to share in the joy of the Universe set right and working in perfect form.  Someday, when He brings forth the New Heaven and Earth, this is what we will experience.  But He wants us to practice now, to cooperate with Him in reversing the flow of death into a glorious flow of life and light.

Unfortunately, reversing the flow requires that we go against the natural flow, the bent we all carry to be selfish, to grasp for our personal interests and desires, regardless of God's will or others' best interests.  Reversing the flow first requires a death to our own pride and selfishness, and then it requires incredible courage and wisdom as we navigate the tricky path of figuring out how to help others also learn to die to themselves, which nobody naturally wants to do, even though it culminates in the death of death and resurrection to eternal hope and life.

This is why the Great Commission is so incredibly difficult.  "Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you..."  It is not good news for people to hear that they are on the wrong side of righteousness, that they are sinners in need of forgiveness, and that they need to die to their selfish desires and surrender to the will of God.  Only broken people will respond to that, only those who have come to the end of themselves and tasted the truth of the bitterness of the way of the world.  In His grace, God brings us to a point of brokenness where we can receive the truth of His hope, but Satan masquerades as an angel of light, constantly trying to avert us from seeing the truth about the darkness.  Satan capitalizes in deception, and we are prone to wanting to be deceived, because we are prideful.  Like the hard chunk in the depths of a massive pimple, pride is the core of the problem.

The problem is not homosexuality.  The problem is pride.  Pride is a much deeper and more pervasive problem than any sexual inclination, and it affects more people.  Those who find it easy to marry the opposite sex and raise families, sometimes feel no compassion for those whose temptations are different from theirs (even though they have plenty of struggles of their own).  Instead of showing kindness and compassion, they respond with revulsion and disgust.  This is not the way of Christ, who regularly made people raise their eyebrows as He supped with tax collectors and prostitutes.  Rather, this is pride, and pride begets pride.  For every self-righteous person who looks at a struggling sinner and says, "You are disgusting," there is a host of struggling sinners who join hands to shout back, "You are more disgusting than we are, and you have no right to speak to us that way."  It is a terrible cycle of ever-increasing pride, people who hate each other, calling each other haters.

Christ's followers are called to love as He loved, and He regularly showed love to sinners.  He said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance" (Luke 5:31).  The irony, of course, is that none of us are righteous.  Thus, Jesus didn't come to call people who do not exist.  He only came to call sinners, which means that He only came for all of us.

However, He didn't merely come to eat lunch with sinners.  He came to call us to repentance. Repentance is a change of heart and a change of direction.  Repentance is when we recognize our sin in light of God's perfect love and righteousness, and we say, "I wonder how you could love me, a sinner condemned, unclean," and we invite Him to purify our hearts, to put His Spirit into our hearts and teach us to love the things He loves, to pursue the way of righteousness, to leave our sinful habits behind.  Repentance produces change.  Our habits, tastes and inclinations do not usually change instantly, but as we grow to know the Lord better, we become quicker to recognize the folly and emptiness of sin.  Over time, it does become easier and more natural for us to choose righteousness over sin, willingly and joyfully.  Yet, it is good, and humbling, for us to remember and talk about our struggles with sin, and how but for the grace and power of God, we would be stuck there.  We should always remember that those locked in sin need hope and encouragement.  It is not our job to shame people.  The Holy Spirit convicts.  The Holy Spirit in us will shine His light where He chooses to shine it, if we will only walk in obedience, humility and love.

Obedience, humility and love, these are the attitude and mind of Christ to which we are called.  If only we could all put away our pride, every one of us, and stop insisting on our own way, our own desires, our own fulfillment, our own success or acclaim.  If only we could trust God and believe in His perfect love, goodness, compassion, and mercy toward us.  Oh Lord, help us, please.

Millennials, pride, and hope in the Lord

Today I saw another online rant about everything the church is doing wrong.  This time it was "millennials," accusing the church of failing them and driving them away.

Bah.

Yes, the church is flawed.  It's made up of humans.  Humans are flawed.  That's the story of the Bible.  Humans are flawed.  The world is flawed.  Life is flawed.  Hence: we need a Savior.

Guess what?  We all need a Savior.  Your mom needs a Savior, and your dad, your Sunday school teacher from 2nd grade, and your pastor, and the guy who strums the guitar.  If there's a lady who plays the organ, she needs a Savior too, and the school janitor, the gas station attendant, the brain surgeon and the investment strategist.  We all need Jesus.  Every last one of us.  We don't need Jesus to give us happiness, or to provide us purpose for living, or to help us attain a sense of personal significance, although some of those things might be byproducts of a healthy relationship with Him.  But the reason why we need Him is because without Him we are hopelessly lost in sin and destined for hell.  This whole world is on a crash course towards destruction.  Nothing is going to stop it.  Our only hope is to throw ourselves on the mercy of Christ, accepting the forgiveness He offers us through His blood sacrifice, His own flesh that He offered up for us on the cross to pay our sin debt.

When we do this, when we run to Him for mercy and cast ourselves at His feet in recognition of our desperate need for Him, He lifts us up out of the slime of our brokenness, into His arms, and gives us clean clothes (allegorically speaking) and clean hearts.  He fills us with His own Holy Spirit who lives in us and changes us, teaches us and bears fruit of righteousness through us, preparing us for an eternity of peace and joy in His presence.  This is Salvation.  This is what it's all about.  It's about where we stand with God (Romans 5:1-8).

It is not about whether a particular church served enough soup to the homeless.  Or whether they sang the particular songs you like instead of the particular songs that they like.  Or whether they listened to your ideas or preached to your personal "felt need."   It is good to be kind to the less fortunate.  It is nice to sing songs that bless your heart.  But that's not what it's all about.  It's about God.  It's not about your voice being heard.  It's about hearing His voice.  And nobody needs to cater to your felt need.  You need Jesus, and the sooner you figure it out, the sooner you can start to heal.

You see, God is real.  He's real.  And so are sin, destruction, and pain.  We see the sin, destruction and pain; we experience them, or observe others experiencing them, every day.  We know that the governments are messed up, people are messed up, the economic systems across the world are all messed up, education and commerce and medical care are all messed up.  The more we try to fix these things, the worse they get--wars, diseases, exploitation, violence.  This is so obvious, I want to hit myself in the face.  Someone pointed out the other day, "I consider it a miracle that I can actually go to the store and buy a bag of apples, when I see how messed up this world is, and then I think about all the steps that were required to get that bag of apples to a shelf in a store where I could buy them, and they weren't even spoiled."

It truly is a miracle, when you think about it, and it would do the lot of us a world of good if we would acknowledge and thank God for such miracles--recognizing the grace He pours out daily on this poor condemned earth--rather than assuming that the store automatically ought to be full of lovely apples, all the time, and they ought to be on sale, too.

We are so prideful.  We assume we deserve all the good things.  We should be healthy and well fed, and live in a beautiful home, and wear only the latest designer styles that came out last week.  These things should just be automatic, we think.  Everybody, whether they choose to work hard and be productive or not, ought to make enough money to afford rent, restaurants, internet and a very new iPhone.  These are inalienable rights, we assume, and healthcare should be free, too.

Ain't gonna happen.  I'm just saying.

It's an unsustainable fantasy.

Yet, when this unsustainable fantasy doesn't come to pass, we're all so prideful that we just look around and blame the other people.  It certainly isn't my fault, we believe (yes, we really believe that).  We blame ISIS, or the Democrats, or the Republicans, or the Church, or the Muslims, or the Christians, or the Jews, or the atheists, or our parents, or the schools or the UN or the unions or the airlines, or drug cartels or policemen or the NAACP or Wall Street.  Gracious, somebody is probably out there blaming the Amish.  And all the time we are blaming all the other people and all the other organizations, we remain staunchly convinced that if everyone else were as smart as we are, and did things the way we think they ought to be done, everything would be okay.

We are so stupid and prideful.  Of course this is not true at all.  The problem is not confined to any of those organizations.  The problem is that humanity is steeped in sin, with a core of pride, selfishness and greed.  The problem is the way every single one of us, the proverbial "me," sees only "my" own perspective and then demands the right to dictate what all the others should do, based--ultimately--on what makes "me" feel good (even if it is feeding soup to the homeless--it is good for me to do this, but wrong for me to force charity work on others).

The problem is sin, and the problem is each one of us.

The only way to escape the cycle is to stop blaming everything outside of ourselves, and to surrender humbly before the Lord.  We need to steep ourselves in scripture, through prayer, asking the Holy Spirit to teach us, reveal truth to us, expose the lies in our hearts and replace them with His Truth.

We need to do this daily, at least, perhaps multiple times per day.  We live in a temporal and fallen world, and thus we need spiritual replenishment on a constant and steady basis ("give us this day our daily bread").  We will never "arrive" and know everything we need to know.  Humbly, we need to go back to the feeding trough of the Word of God, and be nourished, day after day.  Would you only eat once a day?  You could survive, but I warrant you'd be hungry.  Here's the truth: you need God's Word more than you need food.  So if you eat three times a day, you should consider taking time to meditate on God's Word three times a day--read something and sincerely ponder what God is saying to you; ask Him what He is saying to you as you read.  If you snack constantly all day long, try translating that into your hunger for scripture.  Think about it.  We need this.  If we think we don't, we are simply blinded by pride.

You say the church has failed you?  Bah.  "The church" has failed everyone.  Earthly institutions are made up of people, and people are fallible.  Maybe you got caught up in a particularly heretical church, full of particularly petty and unkind people.  If you did, get out of it and find a better group.   Sometimes you have to do that.  Other times, you simply have to stop being critical and do what you can to "be the change you want to see," but not really, because that would be prideful.  Just walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8), and seek justice and love mercy, and live according to the truth He reveals to you, in the power by which His Spirit directs you, and let Him do whatever work He desires, through you.  To walk humbly is to walk in grace, and grace is a synonym for forgiveness.  To be humble is to accept that other people mess up, just the same as you do, and to forgive them and try to find ways to encourage them to do better, exactly as you wish someone would encourage you to do better, graciously, not lording it over anybody, but compassionately sharing our common failings and what we have learned from the Lord about how to overcome our sin in the power of His Spirit (1 John 1:8-10).

The real church, the true church, is the body of true believers.  In any earthly organization called a church, there are both believers and unbelievers, side-by-side.  This is true, regardless of denomination.  The true believers are the ones who love Jesus and respond to His call.  They resiliently keep on repenting when they fail Him (i.e. sin), and hold fast to Him, and doggedly trust Him to forgive them, cleanse them, and help them do better next time.  That is the best anybody can do here on this earth.  It's all you can hope for in another person, and it's what you should strive for yourself.  It's called the perseverance of the saints, in old-fashioned language, but it's true, and this is a modern way of explaining it.  All Christ-followers are somewhere in the process of learning the skill of this resiliency, which depends utterly on faith in the mercy of God and the sufficiency of Christ.  We need to seek one another out, wherever we may be found, and form communities where we encourage and challenge one another to learn what it means to walk in the Spirit (Romans 8:5-11, Galatians 5:16).

Stop blaming "the church" for the mass exodus of the "Millennial."  Millennials are just people, like anybody else, and they are sinners, blinded by selfishness, self-centeredness and pride, just like anybody else.  This isn't really about "Millennials."  It's about categories and labels, and demanding special treatment based on categories and labels.  I guess I just really recoil from the idea that, "The church needs to do X to appeal to people from category X."  I especially recoil when people say, "I am a representative of category X, and the church needs to do X to appeal to me."

I am a little bit angry.  I'll own that.  It probably means I'm struggling with some pride, and I'll own that, too (help me, Lord).  But sometimes--when there is a God in heaven who made us, against whom humanity rebelled, who demonstrated His love for us anyway by dying for us while we were still desperately sinful and destined for destruction--sometimes when people still insist on approaching Him with prideful demands, and an eye to critiquing His instructions, and complaints about "spending too much time in Bible study groups," then maybe there's just an impasse, and these people need to be turned loose to go whence they will go and learn their own lessons in their own ways.  God is still sovereign.

It could be that Millennials are disenchanted by money-grubbing mega pastors who want to build empires stamped with their own names, measured in square feet of designer worship space, censuses, astronomical budgets, and lollapalooza events with rock bands, fog machines, bounce houses and free espressos.  Maybe.  These certainly do exist, and they are arguably not a very cost-effective way to forward the ministry of Christ, especially when you figure all the good the same dollars could do in a third world country.  But nonetheless, real groups of authentic believers also exist.  If that's what you really want, believe Jesus when He says, "Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find," (Matthew 7:7).  Seriously.  God is real, the Bible is true, and authentic-yet-fallible believers do exist.

Seriously.  I'm so weary of people complaining that they won't follow Jesus because they don't like something about somebody in a church somewhere.  This is an excuse if I've ever heard an excuse, and a paltry one at that.  People will let you down.  People will abuse their authority, exploit intimacy, betray confidence, lie and offend.  Even the authentic ones stumble.  And there are people who are not authentic, who have no real relationship with God, who quote His words and claim His name anyway (". . . these people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me,"--Matthew 15:8).  You must not judge Jesus by them.

If you are using the failings of others to justify your walking away from the Truth, you need to own it and get on with your life.  If you don't like the idea of a God who has authority over you, or a Savior towards whom you should be grateful and reverent, then you don't like it.  That's on you, not "the church."  You don't want a god except if you can design and define him.  Therefore, you don't want God.  You want an idol out of your own imagination.

Idols have never gotten anyone very far.

There is hope for everyone, forgiveness for all, and it is never too late, as long as there is life.

Seek the Lord while He may be found;

call on Him while He is near.

Let the wicked forsake his way

and the evil man his thoughts.

Let him turn to the Lord, and He will have mercy on him,

and to our God, for He will freely pardon.

~Isaiah 55:6-7 (NIV)

How can women minister?

The other day, I heard a woman on the radio, Christian radio, being interviewed about women's ministries.  She was from Moody Bible Institute, so I figured she'd be pretty conservative.

However, she kept saying that the church needed to step up and allow women more and better opportunities to serve in their giftings, which may even include teaching.  She remarked that the church seems stuck in old traditions of not allowing women to serve.

Obviously we shouldn't allow mere tradition to rule us.  However, in terms of women's ministries, it's not only traditions.  There are scriptures that address the issue.

1 Timothy 2:12 says, "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man.  She must be silent."  I was in a Bible study once when this verse uncomfortably surfaced.  The Bible study leader said, "Hmmm. Yes, well, that's one of the most unclear scriptures in the Bible."  I don't think I argued with him (he was a man and I am a woman), but my thought was, "It isn't the least bit unclear.  It is perfectly clear."  The only thing that isn't clear about that passage is how, in today's American culture, you can possibly apply such a scripture without coming off as a bigot and fiend.

People insist, "But it's cultural."  However, if you look at the context of the quote, it goes on to reference Adam and Eve, and original sin (1 Timothy 2:13-15).  This would seem to transcend culture.  I'm just saying.

Continuing on, people challenge, "So then if you want to implement all this stuff, are you going to make women wear head coverings?"  Of course, here they are talking about 1 Corinthians 11:5-6.  It seems to me that the issue of head coverings actually does qualify as cultural, as far as those sorts of things go, since hats are vanishing from American culture, unless you are in a blizzard or at a baseball game.  Our outer costumes are not as important as the condition of our hearts.  Earlier in the same chapter, 1 Corinthians 11:3 gives some heart-challenging, culture-transcending principles that I think we cannot so easily sidestep.  1 Corinthians 11:3 says, "Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God."  In other words, God is the head of Christ, who is the head of man, who is the head of woman.  This seems to have nothing to do with one culture or another, and everything to do with the authority structure that God has implemented since the beginning.

But then the people say, "Well what about Galatians 3:28, where it says that in Christ there is neither male nor female?"  The actual verse says, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."  The point is not that men and women, Jews and Greeks, slaves and free men, are all one and the same and indistinguishable.  The point is that no matter who we are, regardless of race, gender or economic class, we are all equally loved by God and have equal access to salvation through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  It's about access to salvation, not access to the pulpit.  In other words, salvation isn't only for rabbis.  1 Corinthians 12:13 underscores the exact same idea (albeit leaving out the "male or female") when it says, "For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body--whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free--and we were all given the one Spirit to drink."  In context, this verse underscores that regardless of our gifts or function, we are all different, complimentary members of one body, the body of Christ.

Finally, of course, there is the argument, "But Deborah got to be a leader and a judge!"  However, if you are truly familiar with the book of Judges, and with that story (Judges 4), you realize that this was a time of national deterioration for Israel, when the leadership of the nation was in chaos.  A woman had stepped up to do the job, but--again if you are familiar with the book of Judges--this can hardly be held up as an example or an ideal.  Furthermore, when fearful Barak refused to go into battle unless Deborah went with him, she told him he would be shamed for his cowardice by having the honor of the victory go to a woman (Judges 4:9).  Clearly, the more desirable arrangement would have been for men to step up and be men.  Invoking the example of Deborah to endorse leadership rights for women in the church, this is on the level of invoking Habakkuk 1:5 to assure people that God always has benevolent plans for their near-term future.

Elizabeth Eliott used to say that she didn't write the Book, she was just pointing out what it said.  She even admitted to not always liking everything it said.  I'm with her, and at the end of the day, I think it is always a very bad idea to ignore what the Bible says.  That's all I'm saying.

Seriously, I don't like where it says that a woman should learn in quietness and full submission, that she must be silent (from 1 Timothy 2:11-12).  I especially don't like the part in 1 Corinthians where it says that women should remain silent in the churches, that they are not allowed to speak, and if they want to ask about something, they should wait and ask their husbands at home, because it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in church (1 Corinthians 14:34-35).  I don't like this, and I've never seen it practiced.  However, knowing that it's there, I sometimes wonder if we're embarking upon a treacherous route when we totally dismiss it.  Not liking a part of the Bible is no excuse for disregarding it.  If we're going to throw this out, what else are we going to throw out?  Shall we pitch everything that conflicts with our current cultural sensibilities?  Indeed, some churches do.  But isn't that what we call "friendship with the world"?   James 4:4 warns us that friendship with the world puts us at enmity with God.  Serious business.

I'm not saying I have the answers.  No.  I have no answers.  Myself, I've always just drawn the line at women teaching or having authority over men.  That's my comfort level.  I don't feel comfortable teaching or having authority over men, or being in a place where other women do.  However, I speak up in church.  I participate in Sunday school and small group discussions.  So I'm inconsistent.  I clearly disobey the parts of the Bible that say women should be silent in church.  I have simply selected my own personal comfort level and drawn the line there.  This probably isn't okay.

On yet another hand, I've been in situations where women are disrespected and marginalized in church settings.  I believe this is also contrary to principles in scripture.  The Bible speaks of wise women being consulted on certain matters (2 Samuel 14:2, 2 Samuel 20:16-22).  The Bible tells the praiseworthy stories of Rahab, Ruth, Abigail and Esther.  God honored Mary by bringing Messiah to earth through her very body.  Jesus was very kind to and accepting of women; He even defended some.  Think of all the gospel stories where Jesus reached out to women, too many to list.  Jesus did not demean women.  Although I believe that male leadership should be protected, nurtured and encouraged in the church, I also know that power corrupts, and males can be prone to lording it over women and oppressing them, just as females can be prone to usurping male authority.  It's such a mess.

What to do?  What are we supposed to do?

I have no answers.

What's coming?

Look at the nations and watch--
     and be utterly amazed.
For I am going to do something in your days
     that you would not believe,
     even if you were told.
               ~Habakkuk 1:5

This is a verse that people often use erroneously, even pastors and missionaries.  They quote it to prove that God is capable of doing amazing things.  They use it as a great encouragement:  "God has wonderful plans!" they exclaim.  "We cannot even imagine what He has in store for us!"  I suspect that sometimes they even feel a little bit proud of themselves for having found such a glorious verse of promise in the Old Testament, in the Minor Prophets of all things, in Habakkuk.

Unfortunately, if they would read even one sentence further, they would see:

"I am raising up the Babylonians," proclaims the Lord, "that ruthless and impetuous people, who sweep across the whole earth to seize dwelling places not their own."

This verse is about impending judgment.  God, who had been patient for generations, was finally executing His promised judgment on Israel (Judah, to be exact), and allowing them to be conquered by an enemy kingdom--Babylon--because of their continual unfaithfulness to Him.  God warned about such a consequence all the way back in Deuteronomy 28, and He had issued many more warnings through the prophets over years and years.  This should not have been a surprise, but God's people were so steeped in their sins, they had lost all sensitivity to their Lord.

At the beginning of chapter 1, Habakkuk cried out against the sins of his people, asking God how long He was going to tolerate all the wrong.  God answered in verses 5-11, explaining that He had a plan, and it wasn't at all what Habakkuk would expect: He was going to send in the ferocious Babylonians to teach His people a lesson.  Habakkuk, in essence, responds to this news in horror, asking, "Really?  Seriously?  The Babylonians?  They're even more evil than we are!"

God judges sin.  Like Israel, our nation may have reached the point where the stench of our sin demands purging.

Let me be clear: I do not think that the USA is or ever has been "God's Chosen Nation."  It seems that many people assume that America is God's nation, and that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are addendums to His Holy Scripture.  I do not agree.  Yes, our nation was founded on Biblical truths and principles, and much of the structure of our government was patterned on Biblical wisdom.  However, God never made any promises specific to America.  Furthermore, the rights claimed in the Declaration of Independence are never guaranteed to anyone in the Bible (seriously: The right to the pursuit of happiness?  When did God ever even make an allusion to anyone having the right to pursue his own happiness?).  Fighting for our rights is an anti-Biblical idea.  Jesus did not teach us to demand our due.  Jesus taught us to give away our coats, to turn the other cheek, and to go the extra mile (Matthew 5:39-42).

The entire teaching of the New Testament encompasses the idea that we are not of this world, we will be hated and persecuted, and those who walk by faith, persevering under trials and persecution, will be rewarded in heaven.

"Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.  Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way, they persecuted the prophets who were before you."  (Matthew 5:11-12)

"All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved."  (Matthew 10:22, also see Mark 13:13, Luke 21:17)

"If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first . . . I have chosen you out of the world.  That is why the world hates you . . . If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also . . . " (from John 15:18-20; the whole passage of John 15:18-27 pertains)

"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace.  In this world you will have trouble, but take heart! I have overcome the world."  (John 16:33)

The book of Acts tells the story of the beginning of the church, the people who believed in Jesus and walked lives of faith in God.  Throughout that story, we see persecution.

"The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name." (Acts 5:41)

In Acts 7, Stephen was stoned for preaching the good news of Christ.  Following the stoning of Stephen, we read:

"On that day a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria."  (Acts 8:1)

Paul lived a life of persecution and imprisonment, which he detailed in 2 Corinthians 11:16-33.  His letters contain a steady stream of encouragement for believers undergoing persecution.

"For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all," (2 Corinthians 4:17).

"For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for Him," (Philippians 1:29).

"Therefore, among God's churches we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring.  All this [how they flourish in spite of persecution] is evidence that God's judgment is right, and as a result you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are suffering," (2 Thessalonians 1:4-5).

Peter talks about it, too:  "Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trials you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you.  But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when His glory is revealed," (1 Peter 4:12-13).

Suffering is also a major theme of the book of Revelation.  God gave us many words to prepare us and help us stand firm in suffering.  We should expect suffering and persecution.  It is normal, not something strange.

For many years in the USA, we have enjoyed religious freedom and the opportunity to be respected and allowed to assemble, to participate in government, to openly express our beliefs.  I believe that, unfortunately, this freedom has often resulted in a fat, complacent, self-justifying, self-serving, unloving church that is neither pleasing to God nor reflective of His character to those around us.  Because we have the "right" to worship, we also seem to feel that we have the "right" to be accepted by the world, to be mainstream, to be esteemed, to be considered appealing and relevant and trendy.  None of these presumptions can be found in the teachings of Christ.  Jesus never said that we have the right to assemble and worship without fear.  Jesus said that we would be hated for His sake.  When we courageously stand firm for Jesus during oppression, this proves the genuineness of our faith.

It may be time for the Lord to sift, winnow and purify His church.  It may time for Him to teach us what it really means to walk by the Spirit, to abide in Christ, and to love.

Rather than fighting for the right to refuse to sell cupcakes to a homosexual couple, perhaps we should prepare the prettiest, most delicious cupcakes we can fashion, and then offer them at a price where we barely break even.  Maybe showing some radical love would be a better way to fight for the kingdom of God than stubbornly provoking a lawsuit.  Maybe this is what Matthew 5:42 is about.

Rather than fighting for laws to restrict abortion, maybe we should seek ways to love people away from abortion: shower grace on single moms, help parents of children with disabilities, and adopt children who need good homes.  Laws have never helped anyone's heart, anyway.  God already proved that centuries ago; He knew we were utterly unable to obey His law without His Spirit in our hearts (Ezekiel 36:27).  In a democracy, laws are merely a barometer of where the hearts of the people are.  When people's hearts change--through the power of the Holy Spirit--then people will change the laws, or even render them irrelevant.  The other way around simply does not work.  This is an especially hard one, because lives are at stake; but ultimately, to be effective, we must change hearts, and passing laws does not change hearts.

Rather than freaking out about the horrors of the sins that are in the world--sins that other people do, the ones that don't particularly tempt us--maybe we should take a look at the planks in our own eyes.  Someone close to me recently remarked, "They point the finger at homosexuals all the time, but when was the last time you saw people organize to rally against pornography?"

We are called to love, to abide in Christ, to walk by the Spirit.  "Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. . . Love does no harm to its neighbor.  Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law," (Romans 13:8, 10).  These are huge things.  If we would actually dig in and work on them, we might not have so much time to go around pointing the finger at other people's sins.  If we figured out how to love as God asks us to, we might have more compassion for people who haven't yet found the remedy for their sin, who are seeking the living water, but drinking sewer water by mistake, a gruesome substitute.  If we approached people with love, compassion, willingness to give and share and sacrifice, maybe more of them would be able to see Jesus in us and respond to Him.

This election, American Christians may lose some of the religious freedoms that have been historically granted to us through our earthly government and man-made Constitution.  Perhaps we deserve to lose them.  Perhaps we have not wielded them well.  Perhaps we have loved our Constitution more than we have loved God's Holy Scripture.  Perhaps we have worshiped freedom more than we have worshiped God, whom the freedom was supposed to enable us to worship.

I still pray for God's mercy.  "In wrath remember mercy," I plead, returning to Habakkuk (3:2). Perhaps our Lord will do a miracle.  Maybe He will enable a third party candidate to achieve something that has never before been achieved, and bring decency back to our government.

Or, maybe the Lord will give us a ruler who seems wicked beyond imagination, like the Babylonians, and we will be humbled and purified through persecution.  Take heart, for God directs the heart of a ruler like a watercourse, wherever He pleases (Proverbs 21:1).  If God could accomplish what He accomplished through Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus, He is certainly capable of using anyone who is elected as president of the United States.

No matter what happens, I think we need to stop trying to "spread our faith" by imposing Christian values on non-Christian people through legislation, and start bringing the Kingdom of God through life changing acts of sacrifice and love to individuals, one at a time.  The enemy has no power against love.

We need to stand firm for Jesus, faithful to His name.  He is our hope, and we must trust in Him alone.

"Some trust in horses, and some trust in chariots, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God." (Psalm 20:7)

We trust Him not to grant us earthly justice, riches, freedom and happiness.  We trust Him for eternal joy, the opportunity to stand humbly before Him in paradise and hear Him say, "Well done, good and faithful servant."

_______________________________________________

Most of the scripture quotes are NIV, or loose NIV from my memory, where they may be scrambled with KJV.

I do not know how I dare to say what we should be doing, as I am not the least bit accomplished at doing these things.  If ever there was a stay-at-home and don't-dirty-your-hands Christian, it is me.  So the challenges I write are as much to myself as they are to anyone.  We have not arrived, but may Jesus help us, at least to head in the right direction.

On alcohol and polygamy

People.  We need to get it straight, what the Bible says, and what it does not say.

Also, where the Bible is concerned, we need to realize: this is the revealed heart of God.  The Revealed Heart of God.  Thus, one should not read the Bible with an eye to looking for loopholes.  One should read the Bible humbly, recognizing the beauty of the authority it holds.

One must not bring preconceived ideas to the Bible and insist that they exist in the Bible, simply because they existed one's mind first.  This is folly.

Revelation 22:18-19 warns us neither to add to nor to take away from the words of the scroll.  I believe that this specifically applies to the book of Revelation itself, but I do not think I am adding to the scroll if I suggest that it would be a safeguarding principle to apply this standard to our approach to all of scripture.  There are dire consequences for tampering with the Word of God.

You must not throw out parts of God's Word that you don't like.  At the same time, you must not claim that God's Word says things you wish it said, but that it does not say.

For instance (I will offend 99.9% of people by the time I've reached the end of this post; I'm sorry):  Claiming that the days in Genesis 1 are 24-hour days is going beyond what the text tells us.  Could they have been 24-hour days?  Of course!  Of course they could have been.  I am not saying that they weren't.  I am only saying that there is not definitive proof in the text that they were, and therefore I think we should be cautious about making claims about how accurate it is to interpret "day" as a 24-hour period of time, rather than as an epoch or something else; for instance, I don't think anybody assumes that the "day" in the phrase, "Day of the Lord," is necessarily 24 hours.  Again, please hear me: I am not saying that Creation did not happen in 24-hour days, I'm just saying that the text does not make it definitively clear that such was the case, and thus we should be careful about what we insist on.  We should firmly maintain that God is the Creator of all things, and that everything that exists has its origin in Him.  We should not insist on 24-hour time periods.  We can ponder the possibility and discuss the implications, but we should not proclaim that the Bible says something that it does not say.

Political activists who are distraught over the definition of marriage in the United States make me similarly crazy.  They try to bolster their arguments against homosexual marriage with bumper stickers sporting stick figures and the phrase, "one man, one woman."  This is insanity.  I'm sorry, but it is.  You cannot read the Bible and come away with the idea that it clearly defines marriage as the union between one man and one woman.  The Bible is rife with polygamy.  Abraham had two wives: Sarah and Hagar.  ("Wait!" you say, "That didn't turn out well!"  Well, no, it didn't, but God did not condemn Abraham for his union to Hagar.  In fact, God extended blessings and mercy to Hagar and Ishmael.)  Abraham also had a wife named Keturah.  As far as I am aware, Isaac was only married to Rebekah.  However, Jacob had two wives and two concubines: Leah, Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpah.  Again, maybe it didn't turn out ideally, but God never prohibited it, nor did He condemn Jacob for his family situation.

Moses had at least two wives: Zipporah and a Cushite.

King David was married to Saul's daughter, Michel, and also to Ahinoam, Abigail, Maacah, Haggith, Eglah and Bathsheba.  That makes seven.  The only one he got into trouble over was Bathsheba, because she was another man's wife and David committed adultery with her.  David was called a man after God's own heart.

When Moses presented the Law, among the guidelines God gave was that a king must not take "many" wives, lest his heart be led astray (see Deuteronomy 17:17).  This--the giving of the Law--would have been a perfect opportunity for God to define marriage--the ideal marriage situation--as one queen for one king, if He so desired.  But He did not.  God only warned kings not to get carried away taking too many wives.  Solomon got carried away and took 700 wives and 300 concubines.  After his wives led him astray to idol worship, Solomon did lose the kingdom, but I think we can all agree that his was the type of extreme case that the guideline had been given to prevent.

Even in the New Testament, where qualifications for overseers are listed, it says that they must be "husbands of only one wife," (1 Timothy 3:2), and the same for deacons (1 Timothy 3:12).  This leads one to assume that there must have been men in the church who had more than one wife, hence the clarification.  Why would you even mention the requirement if it was prohibited for someone to have multiple wives in the first place?

The Bible does warn that homosexuality is a sin and an abomination to the Lord (Leviticus 18:22, 2 Kings 23:7, Romans 1:24-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9, 1 Timothy 1:9-10).  This is because God is the great Husband and Provider, and He created the marriage relationship to be a picture of His relationship to His people (Ephesians 5:31-32).  God wants husbands to provide for, protect and be faithful to their wives in the same way that the Lord does these things for His people.  He wants wives to respond to their husbands' faithfulness and goodness with love and honor, reflecting the way believers should respond to Christ.  These are sexual roles God has created for a specific purpose, and in God's design, the roles of husband/man and wife/woman are not casually interchangeable.  This is true.  This is what the Bible says.  The metaphor exists throughout both the Old and New Testaments.  However, if you combine this point--which is true--with the idea that polygamy is wrong, you discredit yourself.  The Bible does not say that polygamy is a sin.  The Bible demonstrates that polygamy is an arrangement that does not usually breed peace and harmony, but the Bible does not command people not to participate in polygamy.  To suggest that it does is to lie. When you combine a truth with a falsehood, you should not expect to be taken seriously as a truth-teller.  If you want to help people understand how homosexuality is outside of God's will, you ought not combine your argument with blatantly unbiblical claims about polygamy.

Polygamy is not recommended or encouraged, but it isn't prohibited either.

And then there is alcohol.  If I haven't offended you yet, I suppose I will now.

Like polygamy, alcohol consumption is not prohibited in the 10 Commandments.  Jesus famously  turned water into wine at the wedding feast of Cana (John 2).  Some folks try to argue that this was not strong wine, not consumed for a mood change, but John 2:10 would suggest otherwise -- these people were drinking to get drunk, and the master of the banquet was very confused as to why the best wine was brought out after the guests were too inebriated to appreciate it.

There is another affirmative mention of alcohol in Proverbs 9, where Wisdom prepares her banquet and calls people to come to it.  Proverbs 9:2 says that Wisdom has prepared her food and mixed her wine, and in Proverbs 9:5, Wisdom calls out, "Come, eat my food and drink the wine I have mixed."

Ecclesiastes 9:7 says, "Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do."  But one must be careful about pulling verses out of context, especially from Ecclesiastes, which also says that bread is made for laughter, wine gladdens the heart, and money is the answer for everything (10:19).  We know for certain that it is not Biblically sound to operate under the premise that money is the answer for everything (Matthew 6:24, 1 Timothy 6:10).  Likewise, wine may not gladden the heart in a completely healthy and wholesome way.  We should be careful, but all the same, the Bible clearly does not prohibit alcohol consumption.

God does not condemn or prohibit alcohol consumption in His Word.  That may bother you, but it's the way it is.  Perhaps it doesn't bother you.  Perhaps it makes you very happy.  If so, now it's your turn to have your thinking challenged.

Although alcohol appears in a relatively positive light a few times in scripture, most of the time when the subject of alcohol comes up, it is related to someone giving his enemies a "cup" to drink, so that they will be drunk and reeling, and easy to defeat in battle.  People use alcohol throughout the Bible to exploit others, and even when someone isn't specifically using it to exploit, it results in shame and humiliation for those who drink it (compare the stories of Noah in Genesis 9:20-27, and Lot in Genesis 19:30-38).  Nabal, who got drunk during sheepshearing season, was described as an utter fool (1 Samuel 25).

Like polygamy, alcohol consumption is not prohibited, but (also like polygamy) it is shown to be commonly detrimental, something to be approached with caution.  Proverbs 20:1 tells us that wine and beer result in fights and foolishness, and that the wise will not allow themselves to be so led astray.  Proverbs 23:29-35 tells us that those who linger over wine bring all sorts of unnecessary strife and sorrow into their lives, in the end losing all judgment and sensibility.  Drunkenness is condemned outright (Romans 13:13, 1 Corinthians 5:11 & 6:10, Galatians 5:21, 1 Peter 4:3).

In Deuteronomy 17:17, we saw that God warned kings not to take too many wives.  In Proverbs 31:4-5, we also learn that it is not for kings to drink wine or crave beer, lest they lose their judgment and fail to rule justly.  Just as 1 Timothy 3 outlines that elders and deacons should be limited to one wife, it also explains that they must be temperate and not indulge in much wine.

Priests were prohibited from drinking wine while they were serving (Leviticus 10:9).

I believe that the Bible demonstrates that the better, safer path is the path that eschews alcohol.  At the same time, I cannot argue that the Bible condemns alcohol categorically, because it clearly does not.

It comes down to convictions, and convictions are tricky things to navigate.  Convictions are impressions that the Spirit of God lays on individuals for how they, personally, should live, in areas where scripture does not state clear commands.  Romans 14-15 and 1 Corinthians 8 give us guidelines for handling our convictions.  We are to listen to the Spirit and obey His promptings.  I am not to force on others the promptings that the Spirit lays on me.  However, believers are also sternly warned not to belittle a conviction someone else has--which they themselves may not share--because to encourage someone to act against a conviction that God has laid on him would be to encourage him to sin.  Above all else, we are to walk in love and humility, looking not to our own interests but to the interests of others, making up our minds not to put a stumbling block or obstacle in our brother's way.

My own conviction--that alcohol is dangerous and best avoided--stems from the following:

(1) Alcohol is highly addictive.  When a person becomes addicted to something, that thing becomes a major "need" in his life.  When we need something other than God for satisfaction, comfort or fulfillment, then it is, by definition, an idol.  God categorically condemns all idolatry.  Perhaps I would not become addicted to alcohol if I used it, but statistics show that approximately 20% of people who drink become alcoholics.  I do not want to open myself up to a 20% chance of shackling myself to idolatry.  God is my source of satisfaction and joy.  ("And do not get drunk with wine, which leads to debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit," Ephesians 5:18.)

(2)  Because of the high number of people in our culture and society today who struggle with alcohol addiction, I do not ever want my actions or example to lead anybody else into bondage to addictive sins.  ("It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother to fall," Romans 14:21.)

(3)  I have enough trouble keeping a clear head without adding chemicals to the mix.

I am not telling anyone else what his or her conviction must be.  That is between you and the Holy Spirit, and you need to take it seriously, but it's not my business what He tells you.  I understand and agree that the Bible does not say, anywhere, "Thou shalt not partake of a glass of wine."  I will not condemn you or think ill of you for doing so.  At the same time, I ask that if you do not share my conviction, you would still respect me in my conviction, and not ask me to do things with alcohol that would trouble my conscience.

We need to get straight on what the Bible says, and what it does not say.  We need to speak the truth in love, extend grace, love mercy, seek justice and surrender humbly before the the Lord.

Also, I'm counting on my husband never to take a second wife while I'm alive, whether it's prohibited or not.

About laws and hearts

I'm weighing in late on this.

I debated whether I would say anything at all.

Of course, for a person who takes the Bible seriously
and believes that it is the inspired Word of God and the source of all truth,
it is disturbing that our nation is legalizing things that are sin in the sight of God.

This does not make me angry, only sad.  I am sad that people cannot see the beauty of the way of Christ.  I am sad that people are so blinded by their present feelings and conditions that they cannot look ahead to the promise of perfect and complete fulfillment in the future.  Jesus wants to free us from ourselves, yet we want to cling to all of our "selfness" as hard as we can, not understanding how this limits us.  As C.S. Lewis explained, we are so busy playing with a stick in the mud on the street corner, we cannot imagine why a person would leave to go on a holiday at the seashore.

There is no such thing as a "Christian Nation."  We need to get this straight.  God never, never said, "I will create a country and call it the United States of America, and it will be my country, and the people living there will be holy."  He did not say that, did not even hint at it.

Of course, as Christians, we are morally obligated to vote our consciences which, I hope, would be shaped by the truth of God's Word.  However, it is not for us to become angry and vindictive if the majority of people do not agree with us.  We are not called to go out and say, "You are disgusting and bad and stupid, and you are all going to hell."  This is not our calling.  We should not say these things, and we should not even think them.  God makes it quite clear in 1 Corinthians 5:12-13 that we are not to judge those outside the church; He will take care of that.  It is His job, not ours.  We are to live holy lives of love and bring glory to God.  We are the salt of the earth.  We need to bring the vision of the seashore to those wallowing in city gutters.

How do we do this?  I am not sure.  But I am quite certain that we do not do it by being angry, unkind and insulting.

We need to stop being surprised when the culture at large departs from Christian principles.  Matthew 7:13-14 tells us that the gate is wide and the road is broad that leads to destruction, and this is the way the majority will go.  The road that leads to life is narrow, and the gate small, and only a few find it.  God's people are not the majority.  We are a rag-tag band, few and weak and only viable because of the Spirit of God at work in us.  As we walk the narrow road, we should be careful not to drive away any who might join us.  I do not think God is pleased by those who would stand at the little entrance to the narrow way and holler angry epitaphs at people who pass us by.

There has never been a Christian nation.  The nation of Israel was the nation of God's special, chosen people.  He called them personally, through their ancestors, and gave them His Law so they could live holy and protected lives.  It didn't work, particularly.  Of course there was always a remnant, and there still is.  That's what we are, we the rag-tag band, the minority, the aliens and strangers, the remnant.  God preserves for Himself a remnant (Romans 9:27, 11:5).  We are growing into the Kingdom of God, like a mustard seed, through faith and the power of the Spirit at work in us.  The Kingdom of God is a spiritual kingdom, not an earthly one.  There never has been and never will be an earthly nation that will successfully follow the Lord and His ways.

If the Biblical history of the ancient nation of Israel proves anything, it proves that laws are insufficient to control behavior, even laws straight from the Lord Himself.  Laws are powerless.  Only the Spirit of God bringing life and light to our souls can affect our choices and make us righteous.  Only through Jesus can we access the power of the Spirit.  Only God Himself can fix the human condition.

Laws do sometimes affect our perception of the difference between right and wrong, and as they are passed and repealed, people become more confused about how to live well.  For instance, most American Christians did not drink alcohol during prohibition, because it was illegal.  Now it is legal to drink alcohol if you are over 21.  Does that make it right?  Many people think that it does, that it is a fine thing to do.  So, if marijuana becomes legal, does that mean it is also a fine thing to smoke marijuana?  How do the laws of the land contribute to the public definition of right and wrong?  What about abortion?  Abortion is legal, but many people do not believe that it is right.  I think that even some people who are not Christians are horrified at the idea of ending a life in the womb.  Yet, it is perfectly legal and people do not go to jail for doing it.

As Christians in a democracy, we need to recognize that our governmental laws do not reflect right and wrong.  Laws reflect how the majority of citizens decide to live and relate to one another.  They are simply a barometer that shows the condition of the heart of the nation.  The majority may make decisions that are contrary to scripture.  Actually, the Bible tells us that this will happen.  The Bible tells us that we will be hated and persecuted for our beliefs.  The Bible does not tell us that we have a right to go around fighting and loudly condemning sin in fallen man.  I suspect that we fight because we are afraid of what will happen to us, afraid that we will be persecuted.  But the Bible is all about standing firm in our faith in the face of persecution.  Perhaps it is in embracing the suffering that comes to us, in sharing in the suffering of Christ, that we will be able, finally, to make a real difference.

We should expect sin in fallen man.  Our responsibility is this: "Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day He visits us." (1 Peter 2:12 NIV).  Stricter laws will never cure a sin problem.  Only changed hearts will cure a sin problem, and the best way to change someone's heart is by knowing and loving him.

Lord Jesus, please show us how to live lovingly and peacefully in a world that suffers from sin.  Please show us how to share the light and life and hope that we have in You.  Please make us beautiful and holy and pleasing to You.  Please shed Your grace on us.

On dating (hahaha)

So I finally got around to reading this post that was linked in my sidebar:

Of Course Courtship is Fundamentally Flawed

And I also read the post that this blogger linked to in her post, saying, "The arguments in this article are so fundamentally flawed, one has to wonder what sort of homeschooling education produces this logic, or what social bubble spawned the idea that 'courtship dads' are more abusive than others."

I actually liked the post she (The Christian Pundit) was refuting better than I liked her post.  I also think it is telling that Thomss Umstattd Jr. leaves his comments open while hers are closed. (Even though a lot of the comments are ridiculous; it still shows a graciousness of character to allow them.)

Here's my take:

Number one--Everybody is different.  You can't make a one-size-fits-all rule and demand that all relationships begin by following this prescription.  You just can't; it's stupid.  Yes.  Stupid is not too strong a word.

Number two--Who cares what you call it?  I'm sure those who make up the rules and write the lists have very definite definitions of "courtship" (which probably mostly means that people take steps to be honest and pure) and "dating" (which in those same rule writers' minds is something that oozes with sex and deceit and lack of constancy).  But that's just stupid too.  Nowhere is it written that every date is a dangerous encounter with a wicked person who wants to get all he (or she) can from you while promising nothing.  Many people are open, honest, friendly and pure as they go out for pizza and start to get to know each other... and they call it a date.

The point is this:  if you are a single young Christian rambling along through life, either actively or passively waiting to meet the life partner God may or may not have for you, you need to do several things:

1.  You need to remain morally pure.  No sex outside of marriage.
2.  You need to be honest, with yourself and with others.
3.  (and this should probably be #1 rather than #3) You need to trust in the sovereignty of God:
     > be patient,
     > do not panic and marry the wrong person out of desperation,
     > be at peace as a single person,
     > do not insist on forming your self-image around whether you do or do not have a romantic relationship in your life,
     > put the desire to serve God with your life above everything else.

There are corollaries to these, like talking to trustworthy advisers--parents or pastors or godly friends--and listening to what they have to say.  Like hedging your purity with safeguards.  Like being accountable to someone.

However, none of these corollaries should ever be hard and fast rules, because that is legalism.  Yes.  I do not like to throw around the word legalism.  Often people use it as a derogatory term for those who are concerned about obedience to the Lord.  Obedience to the Lord is not legalism.  Making up rules about how to "do" a relationship with the opposite sex is legalism.

Yes, you should honor and respect your parents, but no, you should not always "obey" them after you are an adult.  They shouldn't be demanding your obedience after you have become an adult, unless you have specific circumstances (e.g. Down's Syndrome) which would indicate that you need a lot more direction than the average person.  Parents must not hold the "I-am-your-mother/father-and-you-must-do-as-I-say" card as a tool for manipulation of adult children.

There comes a time in all of our lives when we are responsible for our own decisions.  Our parents must step back and let us fail sometimes -- or, if we are the parents, we need to step back and let our adult children learn directly from God, without us getting involved and trying buffer every lesson.  Everyone learns best that way.  And (get this) God is able to teach people all on His own.

Adult children can ask their parents for advice, but that is what it is: advice.  Not law.  One lady I know calls it "sharing wisdom."  Parents can share their wisdom forever, but there comes a time when they must recognize that it is no longer appropriate for them to make rules, demand cooperation or institute consequences.  Not appropriate.  (Unless there is physical abuse, in which case, by all means, somebody call the police.)

Whether you call it courtship, or whether you call it dating, it doesn't really matter.

You need to love and obey God. 

You need to have respect for the other person, and a willingness to serve and sacrifice.

You need to be ready to leave and cleave (and the way some families handle what they call courtship, this end goal is very severely hampered... but I've seen parents of children who "date" mess this up, too, so like I said, basing it all on a couple of terms is ridiculous).

You need to be self-controlled, faithful and pure.

The Bible is surprisingly silent on specifics sometimes, and I think this is because every person is different, every culture is different, every situation is different.  We like specifics because they are easy; they give us a checklist.  The harder work comes when we really have to think deeply about principles and how to apply them in our lives... but this is what we have to do.  We have to read the Bible, and think, and pray, and then obey.

And we need to avoid generalizing what worked for us into something that we think everyone else must do.  Like I said, we can "share wisdom."  But after we have, we need to leave room for the Holy Spirit to work directly in the other people's hearts and minds.  That's the only way their righteousness will ever count, anyway.

Social Security

So I was debating about what to write today... should I write about Social Security, or should I write about SLS? Social Security won. Watch for an SLS post coming soon.

This particular post is likely to make some people angry. Just warning you. Except... very few people read here, so perhaps I have nothing to fear.

I have some strong opinions, just ask my husband.

For one thing, I think birth control ruined marriage.

I am with the Catholic church on this one. Not that I embrace the Quiverful Movement. I don't. But I still think birth control ruined marriage. When science enabled us to separate the act of sex from the act of procreation, something sacred was lost. No longer was a vow of commitment imperative before a couple embarked on a sexual relationship. Sexuality became divorced from love, and something died that will never live again.

That's all I'm going to say about that, because this post is about Social Security, not birth control. Nevertheless, I think birth control ruined marriage.

I also think that Welfare ruined the poor. (I can just imagine the seething that will ensue if certain people run into this post...)

My parents grew up poor. Really poor. But their parents did not fall into the safety net of Welfare and thus, my parents worked hard and rose up in the world. Granted, their families were only poor because of the Great Depression; they did not come from generations of poor, uneducated, ignorant people. They had education and knowledge in their pasts, and this enabled them to dream and work, sweat and sacrifice. My dad worked for a painter when he was in college. He painted, painted and painted, all so he could pay his tuition. The painter he worked for would call out to him from down a fume-filled hall, "Hey Rainbow! Do ya think you'll ever amount to much?"

Welfare should not have been so bad. People should have used it to get a leg up and move on, amounting to something. But they didn't. Humans are intrinsically lazy and selfish, so if the government will give us enough to feed our faces, many of us are content to sit in a hovel with a TV and cigarettes for amusement and wait for a government check on the first of the month.

This is what the poor children learn... why should I try hard in school? The government check comes whether I do my homework or not. In fact, we get more money from the government when Dad moves out and Mom stops working. So why even try? Life is pretty bleak, but a good hit of drugs always makes me feel better. Whatever.

I could go on, but I will leave it at that because this post is about Social Security, not Welfare. Nevertheless, I think Welfare ruined the poor.

Social Security ruined families, and particularly middle class ones.

Do you want to know why?

Before "Social Security," one's social security was bound up in one's children. People raised their children with the thought in mind, "Some day I will be depending on these people for my own survival. Someday they will support me, and I will live in their house."

Now this was never true for the Very Wealthy, because their futures did not depend on their children, they depended on their trust funds and investments. And we saw what became of their children (read Brideshead Revisited if you want to see... or don't; it's a terribly depressing book).

When "Social Security" came along, people stopped seeing their children as their future. Heck, the government was taking care of their future. Their kids were, at best, a hobby. Kids became things to be petted, spoiled and indulged. Why should one struggle with discipline, teaching offspring to work hard and sacrifice and make good choices? It's so much easier and more peaceful just to let them have what they want. Why not? The government has our backs, financially.

I'm just saying. Necessity is the mother of invention...

When it was necessary for people to parent well because their futures depended on it, by and large they did a much better job of it. Self-interest is a powerful motivator.

When it became unnecessary to parent well, well, by and large a lot of people stopped putting in the effort. They redefined the main responsibility of parenting: instead of parenting to bring up good people, they parented to produce people who were always happy in the short term.

Ooops.

And since the next generation did not learn to work, only to gratify themselves and expect a reward anyway, and to fear nothing because the government will always come to the rescue with a check... oh dear.

So now the Social Security bank is broken. The country is going bankrupt. Far too few know how to work, or to budget, or actually to shoulder responsibility and pay for something.

I live in a nice neighborhood. Not a ritzy neighborhood, but a nice one. Yesterday I was in my van, turning into the development. In the nicely landscaped median at the entrance, where a brick structure proclaims the name of our location, beer bottles lay asunder amongst the dormant perennials. Signs of the next generation.

Are we having fun yet?

A New President

In seven days, we will have a new president.

Humph.

I don't know if I will bother to vote. Obama will certainly win this state, regardless of what I do.

I am, however, "bothering" to pray.

I remember back in 1992... Laura was born on October 8, 1992 into a family with a 16 month old and a 2 (almost 3) year old. My body was worn out from having babies, and I had a terrible time with post-partum hemorrhaging after Lulu was born. There was just no way to stay off my feet. When Shawn was home, I tried, though, because the bleeding was really very alarming; it came in such violent gushes for such long periods of time.

So that Tuesday night in November when Bill Clinton won the Whitehouse for the first time, I was in my bed with the baby, nursing, drinking herbal tea and watching the election on TV. After Shawn got the other two tucked away, he joined me. We watched state after state go for Clinton, and I just felt sick dread in my stomach as I held the baby and wondered what kind of a world we had brought her into.

Well, even with hindsight I think Bill Clinton looks like the All-American kid next to Barak Obama. Barak has a more pleasant speaking voice and is much more handsome. But he is scary. Oh, he is SCARY.

Are the rumors about his birth certificate true? I read that he has a Kenyan birth certificate. We all know that one of the few requirements for qualification to be president of the USA is to be a natural born citizen. It is surmised that Barak was born in Kenya to a Kenyan father. He was recently asked to provide a birth certificate, and he produced a computer printout of something that said he was born in Hawaii, but neglected such facts as his birthweight and the name and signature of the attending physician.

Good grief. We had to go through so much more than that just to apply for Laura's driving learner's permit. You have to have an OFFICIAL birth certificate, one that has the OFFICIAL embossment on it. If you don't, snippy ladies who can barely see over the tops of their glasses will pull political-clerk-rank on you and send you away empty handed. But apparently the rules do not apply for Obama. He can run for president with a lame computer printout to suffice for his proof of natural born citizenship. (BTW--McCain provided an official, embossed birth certificate when requested to do so.)

If they find out that Obama is not, indeed, a natural born citizen, but he has already won the election, what then?  If they took it away from Obama, I suppose we would end up with Joe Biden for our president, which would probably be a fate worse than any we have considered so far. Say good-bye to freedom of religion (if you are a Christian--everyone else will be OK). Say good-bye to freedom of speech (unless you are a pornographer), good-bye freedom of assembly and the right to bear arms. Oh, and also bid farewell to the right to keep the money you earn. You won't have that, either, although it never was listed in the Bill of Rights. I guess our forefathers didn't dream it would be necessary to say that people ought to have the right to keep their own stuff.

I get upset. Then I have to look to the Lord.

Psalm 33 was my comfort during the Clinton years.
"We wait in hope for the Lord; He is our help and our shield. In Him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in His holy name. May Your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in You." Psalm 33:20-22

The wrong signals

So Clay Aiken and Ray Boltz are gay.

I have to admit, I wasn't all that surprised about Clay. I like him. I love his voice. When we visited Grove City College, we listened to his Christmas CD on the way down, and not knowing his "secret," we were cheered by its innocence and traditionalism. But you know, he does lisp his way through "O Holy Night," and I have always wondered. It all makes sense now, but I feel sad, a tremendous sense of loss.

The news about Ray Boltz was like a thunderbolt. I have been incredibly blessed by many of his songs. He was a thinker, almost a theologian. How can this be? How does it work? What about his wife and four children?

If Michael Card is next, you can just shoot me now. I'm just saying.

But back to Ray. Here's the thing. Apparently he couldn't talk to his wife about the struggles he was facing. She should have been able to be his best friend and prayer partner as he wrestled with these issues, but he just couldn't tell her, "Honey, I'm struggling with temptations of attraction towards men." Was he just so frightened of rejection? Of making her feel that he was repulsive? The only way he could face his temptation was to embrace it. That is where the church is failing. Failing.

Conservative church people say, "There is no such thing as a gay person. It's just all sin, lies and deceptions from the devil. You are a sinner if you choose to be gay, and that's it. Repent or go to hell, you miserable sinner."

Liberal church people say, "Jeus loves everyone and he loves you if you are gay, too, so go ahead and be yourself. Jesus came to save, not to condemn."

I think they're both wrong. I think it is very well possible that there are "gay" people, that they are born with a predisposition to be attracted to the same sex. We must not negate this. At the same time, the Bible is quite clear that sexual acts between partners of the same sex are detestable to God, an abomination (Leviticus 18:22, Romans 1:27).

The Bible is clear that it is not being tempted that is the problem. Jesus was tempted to sin, for goodness sake (Matthew 4, Luke 4). It is not wrong to be tempted. What can be bad is what you do with that temptation.

If you are "gay" then your responsibility before God is to master those urges and depend daily on Him for the strength to live a pure life. Conservatives think it is a great victory when a "gay" person is "brought out" of the lifestyle and marries and has children. I think gay people within the church should be able to celebrate victory every day that they do not pursue a form of homosexual relationship, whether or not they pursue a heterosexual relationship. It is not about becoming "normal." It is about not being in bondage to sin.

We are all prey to different sins. I struggle with anger and judgmentalism and a critical spirit. I am not proud of this. There are people who hate me when I even admit these things and think, "Wow. There's one to stay away from!" I try to hide these things while I work on overcoming them. I think this is true of many of the sins we battle. Who feels free to admit, "Yes, I struggle with lust and it is hard for me not to commit adultery." Who has ever said in a small group Bible study, "I just can't stop abusing subtances, " or "Wow, I tell about 30 lies a day," or "Please pray for me to not be so caught up in materialism and vanity.."? We know the response will be, "You do WHAT???" followed by a resolution never to have that person over for dinner, and be sure to protect the children.

We all struggle with different sins, and we are all afraid to admit it and ask for help from our Christian brothers and sisters, because we know we will be judged and rejected. So we struggle in isolation and sometimes the isolation leads us to phenominal failures. Whatever happened to James 5:16--"Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed"? Oh, I forgot. People don't like James. He said, "So you see, we are shown to be right with God by what we do, not by faith alone," (James 2:24). Since the Christian mantra is Sole Fide (Latin for "by faith alone"), there is a consensus among some that James should not even be included in the cannon.

If we could just confess our sins to each other and pray for each other. If we could just rejoice together when by the power of the Holy Spirit we are able to make a righteous behavior choice in the face of temptation. If we could just stop judging each other for being sinners and being tempted. Hello! We are all born under the curse of Adam. We live in a fallen world. We all have an inborn propensity to one type of sin or another. Could we please stop being shocked to learn this about each other? We already know it about ourselves. Or, if you don't, I can tell you right now that your propensity is to sin in pride and self-righteousness. I know this because I am critical and judgmental. But, in this case, I am also right. :)

This summer Shawn's car started to do something I didn't like. The idiot light that said, "Service engine soon," kept coming on. The car ran fine, but the idiot light was always on.

Finally I convinced (nagged) him into taking the car to our garage. They could not figure out the problem, but they reset the idiot light so it would not be on, and they recommended we take it to the dealer for a diagnostic on the computer if we had any further trouble.

The idiot light came back on after a day or so.

So we took the car to the dealer who charged us big money to run a diagnostic. The diagnostic came back--"The pipe that leads to your gas tank is weakening." So this is what makes a "Service engine soon" light glow?

I will spare you the frustrating details of the following few weeks. No, I have to tell you some. We made an appointment for the part to be replaced. Shawn took a whole morning off work and we drove out to the dealer and dropped off the car, and I took Shawn to work and then headed home in my van. Halfway home I got a call from Shawn, telling me that... the dealer did not have the part in stock, so he needed to get the car back and make another appointment for after the part had been ordered.

Ultimately, about three weeks later they finally had the part, and we finally got it replaced.

It was a few days after that when our car died. The engine was totally dead. But the lights and displays still came on. And, ironically, none of the idiot lights were lit at that point. Not a one.

Yesterday we had the car towed to the garage where they replaced a starter wire. Now the car starts and runs like a champ. Guess what? The "Service engine soon" light is back on, too.

It is totally dysfunctional when a light that is supposed to warn of trouble comes on when there is no apparent trouble, and goes off when there is obvious trouble. Our churches are just about this dysfunctional when they make it impossible for people to confess, repent and be healed. When the only way for a sinner to find relief is to jump headlong into an accepting sinful community, you know there is something very, very wrong with the way the church is working.

It is the wrong signal to flash that "You can join us if you have it all together, but stay away if you have any dirty little issues--we don't want to hear about it. We don't want to have anything to do with gross sinners. If you are a believer who struggles with sin, well then shut up and stay away until you get yourself fixed." Clearly, such an approach drives people further into sin. That is not what we are here for.

We must not condone sin. We must not reject sinners. Our job is to love each other, encourage each other through our struggles towards holiness. When are we going to start doing this?

Actually, I think my church is making strides in this area. We have Monday night groups that meet to work on sin issues and other "touchy" circumstances. Unfortunately there is such a stigma to these groups that the church is set up to allow people to come and go with minimal chances of being seen. People share only in groups where everyone else struggles with the same thing. It is good that we are addressing these issues, but it is sad that there has to be such protection from stigma, such fear of being discovered.

Life is pretty sad, isn't it? It is hard to live the way Jesus wants us to. "So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples." John 13:35-36

Dysfunctionality

While going through my old MSWord files this afternoon, I came across an essay I started about nine years ago, and I decided to try to finish it up and "publish" it here.

"Dysfunctionality" is such a buzzword these days, it surprises me that conservatives have not capitalized on it in the war on abortion. Well, maybe not, since so-called conservatives no longer seem to take a stand on abortion. But for the grassroots conservatives who do...

While the battle rages on, abortion is compared to murder and aborted babies are compared to slaves before civil rights came to pass. From the conservative point of view, this is well and good and logical. But it is an approach that continually fails to have any effect whatsoever on the right-to-choose psyche. It seems that it might be time to attempt a new approach and a new terminology.

Abortion is a symptom of a sexually dysfunctional society. The problem is an unrestrained and overindulgent national appetite for sex. But how can this be proven to people whose belief system approves of sex at any time, for any reason and in any way?

Perhaps we can try by comparing the basic drive for sex to the basic drive for food. People have a natural inner drive to eat. We have to eat, or we would die. However, it does not follow that eating everything we might like to eat (and doing so more often than a few times a day) is good for us. We know that we must put limits on our eating in order to remain healthy. Therefore, the United States government has gone so far as to create lists and guidelines to try to help people make healthy eating decisions: Eat more fruit and vegetables, lots of whole grains and a proper amount of lean meat. Limit fats, sugars and refined white flour. Do not over-indulge in huge portions. Drink a lot of water, an appropriate amount of milk and limit sodas and sugary juices. We all know these things. It is simple math, really. People know what they should do: if they do it, they are healthy but if they struggle to control their drive for food, they tend to get fat.

It isn’t so different with sex, except that nobody in the secular world seems to face the fact that there are guidelines that can govern our sexuality and keep us healthy. Guidelines for “safe sex” according to the Powers That Be (whomever they are—but they seem to have a real foothold in the public schools, libraries and clinics) consist of merely one rule, “Wear a condom.” Well, that’s kind of like saying, “Use Nutra-sweet instead of sugar.” It could be of mild benefit in some cases, but mostly it leads to a false sense of security, and in some ways it can cause more problems than it solves.

I’m not going to get into one of my anti-aspartame tirades right now, because that is a topic for a whole different day. Let me just say that the diet product industry is akin to the birth control industry. It’s all about trying to abet people in believing that they can have their pleasure for free—enjoy their indulgences with no cost. It leads to a twisted perspective on the meaning of eating and the meaning of sex. The pleasurable acts are taken as something separate from the function that they are intended to perform—the continuation of life, whether individually by nourishment or socially by procreation. God never intended for these things to be separated in this way. In His mercy, He made the acts pleasurable so that we would be motivated to continue life, but they were given to us for a purpose, a purpose that we often want to limit and escape.

Just as we need to eat or we will die, so we need to procreate, or humanity will die out. However, we can easily see that too much eating is ultimately unhealthy, and the parallel holds true for too much sex. Too much sex is disastrous for society. Too much unbridled sex leads to ghettos full of unwed mothers and illegitimate children, which leads to poverty which leads to crime and substance abuse. Um, bingo. The downfall of American society as we see it today. But nobody wants to admit it. Freedom of sexual expression has practically been written into the Bill of Rights. Sexual disorder? The only sexual disorder people seem willing to acknowledge is the inability to perform a sexual act. This is a frighteningly inaccurate way to view the issue.

Although deviant sexual behavior is rarely identified, it is generally agreed that there are such things as eating disorders. One of the most famous of these is Bulimia, where an individual, usually a young girl, binges on vast quantities of food and then proceeds to plunge her fingers down her throat and regurgitate the vile contents of her stomach. This is her way of purging her body and escaping the consequences of her previously overindulged appetite. There is a direct and obvious parallel to abortion here. When the sexual urge is overindulged in inappropriate ways, an unwanted pregnancy often occurs. To escape the consequences of this unwanted pregnancy, a girl (woman if you will) has an abortion, purging her body of the byproduct of her sexually promiscuous behavior.

Nearly everyone agrees that Bulimia constitutes dysfunctional behavior. Indeed, psychologists and psychiatrists are hired and paid handsomely to treat it. Its detrimental effects are widely publicized to young women. Health classes in public schools repeatedly warn young people about the dangers of eating disorders. Who hasn't heard that Bulimia can burn out one's esophagus and rot one's teeth? No credible health practitioner would ever prescribe Bulimia as a method for treating obesity. However, doctors in professional settings routinely perform abortions to treat the consequences of overly sexualized behavior, while minimizing the health risks. This seems illogical, since hemorrhaging, infertility, and breast cancer would seem to be greater threats to one's long term well being than rotten teeth and esophageal ulcers.

Rather than identifying abortion as an unhealthy escape from the consequences of dysfunctional behavior, “education” systems present it as a viable option for dealing with an unwanted pregnancy. The root of the problem stems from the rampant acceptance that our society at large holds for dysfunctional sexual indulgence. Young people are actually encouraged to do such things as, “Discover your sexual orientation,” and, “Express your sexuality.” From movies and television programs to commercials that people don’t even make a conscious decision to watch, pervasive bumping, grinding, groaning, back-arching, panting and disrobing combine to convince the empty-minded public that orgasm is the ultimate raison-d’être, and that You have both the right and the responsibility to obtain as much of it as possible.

So while the high school health teachers hand out photocopies of the FDA approved dietary standards and encourage young people with eating problems to seek help immediately, they lay out no real standards for healthy sexuality. This is incomprehensible when you realize that they do teach about AIDS, herpes and the plethora of other sexually transmitted diseases. Healthy sex should be recommended to take place between two people, preferably both over 18 years of age, only within the context of a heterosexual, single-partner, committed relationship (marriage), always with the understanding that sex is connected to procreation and should not take place outside of a loving family environment. These recommendations are based on what science shows us is healthy for our bodies.

We must somehow find a way to educate the public that abortion is a dysfunctional response to a dysfunctional sexual behavior. Women who have abortions need therapy, not "choice." (And doctors who perform abortions should lose their licenses to practice—whatever happened to “First do no harm…”?)