Thoughts on Racism…

I am reposting this blog that I wrote back on November 8, 2019, before the recent events that have triggered our national discussion on race. I hope you read it again with new eyes and find it helpful…

There was an article in the Daily Herald (Chicago) this week about a group of 18 mostly African-American folks being asked to change tables at a local Buffalo Wild Wings because some regular “white” customers didn’t want the group to sit near them. This racist request was reported and 2 managers were fired. Some people were calling for a boycott of BWW until safeguards such as sensitivity training for all employees , etc. were put in place.

It is true that we don’t know the whole story, which doesn’t call the incident into question, but it does raise the question of why such a thing continues to happen over and over again after so much publicity and media attention. Racism is defined as “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race/ethnicity based upon the belief that one’s own race is superior.” I think that this is too narrow a definition. While such feelings of racial superiority can be part of the mix, I believe that the underlying causes for racism are far more complex and deceitful.

In Numbers 12, there is an account of an older sister, Miriam, and a younger brother, Aaron, criticizing their brother, Moses, for marrying a Cushite woman. Cush was a region of southern Ethiopia, where dark-skinned people lived. “Can an Ethiopian (same word translated “Cushite”) change his skin or a leopard his spots? Then also you can [not] do good who are accustomed to evil” (Jeremiah 13:23). As an aside: Moses had married a Midianite woman, Zipporah, 40 years earlier whom he had met in the Sinai region after his escape from Pharaoh. The Midianites were originally from northern Arabia, but many had migrated to Sinai. Reading between the lines, it could be that Zipporah had died (or that she had left him again like she did in Ex 4:18-20) and was living with her father’s family back in the Sinai. Either way, Moses’ new wife was not Zipporah. I doubt that Miriam and Aaron would have complained about her after 40 years.

So the sibs criticized Moses for marrying a black woman, who was not an Israelite. The text implies that Miriam took the lead in this family dispute. We would call this racism, but the way the story is unfolds in the text, racial superiority was not what prompted the slur. The underlying cause for this racially motivated criticism was jealousy (especially Miriam’s) of Moses’ leadership position and the belief that she could totally do a better job. God punished Miriam severely by striking her with leprosy that turned her skin “white.” John Piper suggests that in Numbers 12:10 God is in effect saying, “you like being light-skinned Miriam? I’ll make you white as snow.” She was not punished for being a racist but, because she was jealous of Moses and criticized the leadership of someone whom God had appointed. Aaron confessed his sin and wasn’t punished, while Moses prayed for his sister’s healing and was heard.

This text is not only a study of how a leader handles criticism (with humility and restraint), but also informs us that there are deeper reasons for the sin of racism than just an attitude of “racial supremacy.” Racism can also be caused by a heart of jealousy, of fear, of inferiority, or of just going along with the crowd in order to be accepted. As we have seen in the case of the Holocaust, Hitler made the Jewish race a scapegoat for the problems of the nation. There could be that same blame-shifting racism among some white people who see law and order as being disrupted by immigration protests trying to populate this country with more of the “foreign element” and people who don’t “look like” they belong here. A case in point is the story of the 61 yr. old white man in Milwaukee who was arrested over this past weekend for throwing battery acid in the face of an Hispanic man while shouting, “why did you come here and invade my country?”

Sins of the heart cannot be punished by human law, but it is fairly obvious that ignoring the deeper issues of racism only adds to the problem. Certainly a society must bring law into the picture in order to protect racial and ethnic minorities from oppression and hate crimes, but, at the same time, it cannot ignore the place of faith as a part of the solution for the racial divide, because it is the function of religion (not law) to address issues of the heart. Thus instead of criticizing religion, society should encourage the practices of religious communities to challenge their membership to live out their faith and not in contradiction to it—especially as it relates to racial issues.

Jesus said, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander” (Matt. 15:19). He also told his disciples that you’ll be able to recognize the true and the false adherents to religion by their fruits, because a healthy tree cannot produce bad fruit and a bad tree cannot produce the good. (Matthew 7:15–20)

I believe that only a person in whose heart God has worked through the miracle of new birth, because of faith in Jesus Christ, can be changed from a racist to a “gracist.” This change does not occur overnight, but there should be an immediate desire for racial reconciliation and a growing attitude of repentance that will ultimately lead to change from the inside out. This repentance along with a humility to learn from those of different ethnicities, will bring healing to the deeper issues of the heart which often cause racial conflict, which Miriam and Aaron so vividly exemplified.

As Christian faith-communities we must continue to preach repentance and faith in Jesus, as well as to demonstrate justice, mercy, and humility to all people regardless of race or ethnicity. (Micah 6:8) It is time for followers of Jesus “to put up or shut up” when it comes to the racial divide in this country—to act like him, to love like him, or else they might prove to be false followers filled with self-deceit. Jesus once said something that should make us all shudder and fall on our knees in humble self-examination: “When that day comes, many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, cast out devils in your name, and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them to their face, ‘I never knew you: out of my sight, you and your wicked ways!'” (Matthew 7:22, 23 NEB)

Curious George and Current Events…

My granddaughter, Davy, loves Curious George; a mischievous little monkey belonging to “the man in the yellow hat” named Ted (I bet you didn’t know that was his name). Almost every time she comes to my house we watch an episode or two (or more) together. There was one particular episode in which Ted was the scoutmaster for the Little Sprouts  and took them for a hike in the woods. They got lost after relying on a young assistant leader’s GPS,  and so Ted told George to climb up a tall tree and look around so he could help locate where they were.

In Psalm 121:1, 2 the writer says, ” I will lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” The opening verses of this Song of Ascent could be understood in two ways. One interpretation is that the hills were recognized as a place of idolatry and thus “looking unto the hills” could represent a dependency on humanly created instruments of salvation and deliverance. The writer affirms that his reliance is upon the Lord. An other interpretation says that the hills represented the holy hill of Zion (Jerusalem) where the Temple was built and where God “dwelt.” Thus “looking unto the hills” in this case meant acknowledging God as The Psalmist’s ultimte source of deliverance.  Both interpretations land us in the same place; in the midst of the circumstances that surround us we should not place our confidence and hope in any form of human deliverance, but only in God who is good, merciful, and sovereign. However, to do this we must “lift up our eyes” (or go climb a tree with George) and look for God above our circumstances.

Why is it that we don’t lift up our eyes and look for God? I think it is because of our pride and self-sufficiency. Perhaps we think we know what is best and conclude that we can figure things out. We are often like a child who thinks she knows how to put on her coat even though she can’t and has a fit if you try and help her. And so we like stubborn children close in upon ourselves and live in a world where things begin and end with us and with our interpretation of reality.

I’m reminded of the testimony of Chuck Colson’s conversion. Colson, a former Marine captain and Special Counsel to Richard Nixon, was convicted and sent to prison for complicity in the Watergate scandel of the 1970’s.  He was given a copy of CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity and was overpowered by this quote: “There is one vice of which no man in the world is free…the vice I’m talking about is Pride…. Pride leads to every other vice; it is the complete anti-God state of mind. As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people, and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see somethng that is above you.”

If I might be so bold as to make an observation about how many people have framed their joy or disappointment at the outcome of the recent election. As Christians, we can often be guilty of failing to lift up our eyes and see what is above us. We can easily demonstrate pride and self-sufficiency when we see only what we want to see; refuse to listen to  an other perspective; and, most of all, fail to acknowledge God’s sovereignty and power. I am deeply concerned that many have chosen to drumroll their political views at the risk of hindering their effectiveness in sharing the gospel and/or of sacrificing their relationships within the Body of Christ.

When I had a church in Massachusetts, in a very liberal college town, I chose never to put a political sign on my lawn or sticker on my car. I stuck with this decision even when one of my elders decided to run for Congress against a very liberal (notice I don’t use the word progressive) encumbent. Though I voted for my dear brother, who lost in a landslide, I was most concerned that if I wore my political leanings on my lawn or bumper, my neighbors would pigeon-hole me politically and reject the gospel for reasons other than the gospel.

It is no secret that I am very concerned about the character and rhetoric of our President-elect. I am also very concerned about the cultural vitriol being expressed for him and against him. I understand the variety of reasons for why many evangelicals voted for Trump; not all are sexist, racist, and ethnocentrists. However, I also understand the pain of many minority Christians who are very concerned and fearful because they have experienced these -ists first hand.

I believe that when we lift up our eyes to our God and reaffirm our dependency upon him and our commitment to the gospel, we will see that our main concern as evangelicals should not be whether we won or lost politically, but how we treat the broken and suffering people around us; both in the Church and those in our culture who are truly “lost.” We also will come to see that racism and sexism are spiritual issues embedded deep in the hearts and systems of all humanity, which is why we need a savior…why I need a savior!

Let us once again hear the prophetic voice: “Look unto me and be saved all the ends of the earth! For I am God and there is no other” (Isa 45:22).

The Presidential Campaign: God Have Mercy upon Us!

If the following post seems familiar, it is because I am reblogging a post written 3 months ago. I think that much of the content is relevant to the upcoming election and that is why I changed only the title.

This past July 4th, I was re-reading the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution written eleven years later; amazing documents. While many consider them to be “inspired,” they are not inerrant; the 28 amendments to the Constitution are witness to that. Also the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 19th Amendments in particular prove that the Constitution has blind spots and must supported by something more if it going to provide the foundation for continuing freedom.

Os Guiness has written in A Free Peoples Suicide that there are many people in America today who scorn religious fundamentalism but are hard at work creating “a constitutional fundamentalism. It is being done through lawyers and judges rather than rabbis, priests, and pastors. Constitutional and unconstitutional have replaced orthodox and heretical.”  First amendment rights are being argued as the basis for opposing agendas and the interpretation of the Constitution itself is at the whim of political bias. Thus this incredible document alone cannot form the foundation for sustainable freedom. It needs to be supported by something else.

Guinness offers; “What the framers believed should complement and reinforce the Constitution and its separation of powers is the distinctive moral ecology that is at the heart of liberty.” Tocqueville called this moral ecology the “habits of the heart.” Guinness calls it “the golden triangle of freedom…freedom requires virtue, which requires faith, which requires freedom.”

What resonates with me, mostly because we have been assaulted by months of political campaigning and debates, is the diminishing importance of virtue (character) that we see in our nation. We stress a written Constitution over the moral constitution of our nation’s citizenry and leadership. Unfortunately, examples of this are not hard to find.

Look at the impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998 when he was the sitting president. He was not convicted by the Senate of “high Crimes and Misdemeanors”(Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution), and the overall consensus to the whole “affair” was that the character of the president was irrelevant as a public issue. What really matters to our society is competence– not character.  Look at the unrestrained greed and unfettered capitalism  of the Wall Street crisis and the recession of 2008. Look at the present political scenario and the upcoming election that will boil down to which untrustworthy candidate America trusts more. Our nation has sown the wind by making faith and virtue a private matter; it is now reaping the whirlwind of having two presidential candidates with serious personality flaws.

George Reedy, special assistant to Lyndon Johnson looked back on his experience in the halls of power and said, “in the White House, character and personality are extremely important because there are no other limitations…. Restraint must come from within the presidential soul and prudence from the presidential mind. The adversary forces which temper the action of others do not come into play until it is too late to change course.”(The Twilight of the Presidency, 1970, p. 20)

In spite of their importance, experience and competence are not the most important ingredients to what we should look for in a leader. We need a person of character who has demonstrated trustworthiness in his/her private world as well as in the public square. It is not the rhetoric or the promises for the future, but it is what they have done about keeping their promises in the past, both privately and publicly.

I think Os Guinness borders on the profound when he says, “Externally character is the bridge that provides the point of trust that links leaders with their followers. Internally, character is the part-gyroscope, part-brake that provides a leader’s deepest source of bearings and strongest source of restraint when the dizzy heights of leadership mean there are no other limitations.”

Our Constitution is a magnificent document and we can be thankful for it. But let us not fool ourselves into thinking that our nation can be sustained by a document alone without the virtue of its leaders and citizenry. “A good government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual and slavery will ensue.” (John Witherspoon, the only minister to sign the Declaration of Independence.)

Vote your conscience and may God have mercy on America!

Trust Me: I Will Protect You!

Psalm 121 is a beautiful song of trust and confidence where the psalmist expresses that God is his Helper and his Keeper; that he is safe and secure under the ever-watchful eye of the Creator of the heavens and the earth. The Psalmist is confident that the One who keeps Israel secure is also the deliverer of the person who trusts in him.

The word “keep” is six times in the Psalm which you will not notice if you read the NIV or KJV:

“He who keeps you will not slumber” (Psa. 121:3).

“He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep” (Psa. 121:4).

“The LORD is your keeper” (Psa.121:5).

“The LORD will keep you from all evil” (Psa. 121:7).

“He will keep your life” (Psa. 121:7).

“The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and for evermore” (Psa. 121:8)

It is why I call this the Keeper’s Psalm because the Hebrew word shāmar is repeated by the psalmist to emphasize God’s care and protection for the individual and for the nation.

There is one interpretive decision that we have to make immediately as we read v. 1. From where does the Psalmist initially look for help? I memorized this Psalm in the KJV many years ago and it begins “I will lift up my eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help?” The understanding is that since this is one of the Psalms of Ascent (120-134), the worshipper is coming to Jerusalem and lifts up his eyes to the holy Mount Zion where the Temple stood (2000 ft. above sea level). He makes a statement of trust and confidence that God, whose presence resides in the Temple’s Holy of Holies, is the only One who can help and keep him and his nation.

However, there is another way to read this verse where the conclusion is the same, but the starting point is different. “I will lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come?” (ESV) French theologian and disciple of John Calvin, Theodore Beza, underscored this translation with his own unique translation of Psalm 121:1, “Should I lift up my eyes unto these mountains? From where will my help come? Beza suggested that the psalmist asked two questions, not one. The first question is whether or not he should look toward the mountains; the second question is about the psalmist’s source of confidence.

In commenting on Beza’s translation, Professor Claude Mariottini of Northern Baptist Seminary says: Most commentators believe that the “mountains” in question refer to one mountain, Zion, the dwelling place of God…. But Beza’s interpretation may reflect another reality behind the psalmist’s faith. In Israel, the mountains were the places where pagan practices and illegitimate worship were conducted by the Israelites.

Thus, according to Beza’s translation, the psalmist refuses to look toward the mountains because he knew that his help would not come from there. Thus, using Beza’s translation of verse 1, “Should I lift up my eyes unto these mountains?”, the answer to the psalmist’s question is “no”, because his help will not come from the pagan gods worshiped on the mountains.

Again, the conclusion is the same but the starting point is different depending on how you interpret v.1. I like Beza’s translation. As we face an uncertain future as a nation, we have a choice of where we look to find the source of our confidence and security. Do we find it in the size of our military and of our weaponry? Do we look to our political leaders who argue as to who would make the best Commander-in-Chief and protect us the most? Or, do we look to the Creator of heaven and earth as our Helper and Keeper. We must make this choice almost daily as we watch the news, listen to the political rhetoric, and continue to raise our children and grandchildren in an evil and violent world. Whom do you trust?

July 4th: May God Have Mercy on America!

This is July 4th and I am re-reading the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution written eleven years later; amazing documents. While many consider them to be “inspired,” they are not inerrant; the 28 amendments to the Constitution are witness to that. Also the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 19th Amendments in particular prove that the Constitution has blind spots and must supported by something more if it going to provide the foundation for continuing freedom.

Os Guiness has written in A Free Peoples Suicide that there are many people in America today who scorn religious fundamentalism but are hard at work creating “a constitutional fundamentalism. It is being done through lawyers and judges rather than rabbis, priests, and pastors. Constitutional and unconstitutional have replaced orthodox and heretical.”  First amendment rights are being argued as the basis for opposing agendas and the interpretation of the Constitution itself is at the whim of political bias. Thus this incredible document alone cannot form the foundation for sustainable freedom. It needs to be supported by something else.

Guinness offers; “What the framers believed should complement and reinforce the Constitution and its separation of powers is the distinctive moral ecology that is at the heart of liberty.” Tocqueville called this moral ecology the “habits of the heart.” Guinness calls it “the golden triangle of freedom…freedom requires virtue, which requires faith, which requires freedom.”

What resonates with me, most likely because we have been assaulted by months of political campaigning, is the diminishing importance of virtue (character) that we see in our nation. We stress a written Constitution over the moral constitution of our nation’s citizenry and leadership. Unfortunately, examples of this are not hard to find.

Look at the impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998 when he was the sitting president. He was not convicted by the Senate of “high Crimes and Misdemeanors”(Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution), and the overall consensus to the whole “affair” was that the character of the president was irrelevant as a public issue. What really matters to our society is competence– not character.  Look at the unrestrained greed and unfettered capitalism  of the Wall Street crisis and the recession of 2008. Look at the present political scenario and the upcoming election that will boil down to which untrustworthy candidate America trusts more. Our nation has sown the wind by making faith and virtue a private matter; it is now reaping the whirlwind of having two presidential candidates with serious personality flaws.

George Reedy, special assistant to Lyndon Johnson looked back on his experience in the halls of power and said, “in the White House, character and personality are extremely important because there are no other limitations…. Restraint must come from within the presidential soul and prudence from the presidential mind. The adversary forces which temper the action of others do not come into play until it is too late to change course.”(The Twilight of the Presidency, 1970, p. 20)

In spite of their importance, experience and competence are not the most important ingredients to what we should look for in a leader. We need a person of character who has demonstrated trustworthiness in his/her private world as well as in the public square. It is not the rhetoric or the promises for the future, but it is what they have done about keeping their promises in the past, both privately and publicly.

I think Os Guinness borders on the profound when he says, “Externally character is the bridge that provides the point of trust that links leaders with their followers. Internally, character is the part-gyroscope, part-brake that provides a leader’s deepest source of bearings and strongest source of restraint when the dizzy heights of leadership mean there are no other limitations.”

Our Constitution is a magnificent document and we can be thankful for it. But let us not fool ourselves into thinking that our nation can be sustained by a document alone without the virtue of its leaders and citizenry. “A good government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual and slavery will ensue.” (John Witherspoon, the only minister to sign the Declaration of Independence.)

May God have mercy on America!

 

Christianity Should Never Rule…

The following blog post is from Peter Wehner (contributing opinion writer for the New York Times) giving his reflections on Good Friday and Easter.

“The writer Philip Yancey recently offered this:

I wrote in Vanishing Grace about an important insight I learned from a Muslim scholar who said to me, ‘I have read the entire Koran and can find in it no guidance on how Muslims should live as a minority in a society. I have read the entire New Testament and can find in it no guidance on how Christians should live as a majority.’

“(Yancey) put his finger on a central difference between the two faiths. One, born at Pentecost, thrives cross-culturally and even counter-culturally, often coexisting with oppressive governments. The other, geographically anchored in Mecca, was founded simultaneously as a religion and a state….”

“While Islam seeks to unify religion and law, culture and politics, Yancey wrote, Christianity works best as a minority faith, a counter-culture…. Historically, when Christians have reached a majority they too fall to the temptations of power in ways that are clearly anti-gospel. Add to this the fact that, as sociologist of religion Rodney Stark has pointed out, Christianity’s greatest period of vulnerability and political weakness was the time of its most explosive growth. He estimates that Christianity saw a 40 percent growth rate per decade from 30 AD to 300 AD. As a result a tiny and obscure movement became the dominant faith of Western civilization. And its enduring symbol is not the shield or the sword but the cross.”

“Early on in my faith pilgrimage – a journey that did not come particularly easily to me – I was struck and to some degree captivated by how in many respects the Christian faith is a radical inversion of what the world deems worthy and worth celebrating. The last shall be first. Strength is made perfect in weakness. The humble will be exalted. Blessed are the meek, the poor in spirit, and those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness. Love rather than hate your enemies. Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for God. Whoever loses his life for God’s sake will find it.”

“Jesus himself came not as a king but as a servant. He was born not to wealth and privilege in Rome but in a manger in Bethlehem. He was a God who wept, was acquainted with grief and was ‘counted among the outlaws.’ He preferred the company of sinners to that of religious authorities, with whom he repeatedly clashed. He was abandoned and betrayed by his disciples. And he endured an agonizing death on a cross.”

“It is hardly the script you or I would write, a God whose crown was made of thorns. But for those of us of the Christian faith, Good Friday gives way to Easter Sunday – the days of God’s overpowering acts in history, acts in which God’s judgment and grace were revealed to all the world, in the words of the pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”

I would agree with this assessment. What we have learned from the Moral Majority and the rise of the Evangelical Voting Bloc is that even when they have held sway, they have not produced a more Christian nation; just as the Crusades and the Inquisition did not advance the gospel to the world. Jesus was asked by Pilate if he was a king; his reply, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36).

We (the Church) have not been called to rule, but to serve and to live out Christ’s kingdom here on earth. Our sign will never be a scepter, but always a cross because it will include suffering. Our prayer should not be for America to become a winner again, but as Francis Schaeffer used to say even back in the 1960’s, we should pray that God would have mercy on America and bring us to our knees in humble repentance. This will be our greatest victory and greatest witness to the world.

April Fools…

I wanted to write an informative blog on the origin of April Fools’ Day, but there are so many claims that I gave up and personally don’t care. So I thought instead I would share some memorable hoaxes that have been foisted upon our family over the years, but I couldn’t think of any. Finally, I thought I would tell you about the incredible April Fools’ joke I played on my parents when I found out I was adopted (April Fools), but I can’t.

On the one hand, it is fun to be a bit of an intentional ninnyhammer  on one day of the year when we often act or say foolish things quite naturally at other times. On the other hand, it is too bad we take so much time thinking of some untruth to tell someone when the time could be better spent thinking of something encouraging to do or say to them.

Instead, I think I’ll share a bit on the three types of fools that are revealed in the Bible. I would highly recommend the book Fool’s Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion by Os Guinness, especially the chapter, “The Way of the Third Fool.”  Guinness writes that there is, first of all, the Fool Proper; applied to a broad category of people who have no time for God. There are those who make the outright claim that there is no God (Ps 14:1) or those who live with no conscious consideration of God (Lk 12:20).

The second kind of fool that the Bible mentions is the Fool Bearer. This person is the one who has been treated as a fool for Christ sake (1 Cor 4:10). Like Dostoevsky’s Idiot, this is a person who is misunderstood, mistreated, persecuted, and rejected for the sake of following Christ. He or she is willing to be laughed at by the world just as their Savior was mocked and treated as a Fool King when he was dressed in purple, given a fake scepter, and a crown of thorns as part of his suffering.

The third kind of fool that Guinness describes is the Fool Maker. The Fool Maker is one “…who is prepared to be seen and treated as a fool, so that from the position of derided folly, he or she may be able to bounce back and play the jester, addressing truth to power, pricking the balloons of the high and mighty, and telling the emperor he has no clothes… The cross, Martin Luther wrote, was the devil’s mousetrap. The devil smelled cheese, and wham, felt steel…Everything that climaxed in that sultry Passover week was spring-loaded with a deeper, history-shaking truth, although under a disguise so strange that it bewildered even the closest and most ardent followers of Jesus–and the devil himself fell for the smell of cheese. Just so did God shame the world’s folly, subvert the wold’s pride and put death to death through the death of his Son.”

And what I find most insightful is the fact that Guinness shows that this kind of foolery is what God uses to win the world. He quotes Reinhold Niebuhr who claimed that there is a limit to what even the power of God can do as power alone, for “such power does not reach the heart of the rebel.” Guinness adds, “power can fence us, in but only sacrificial love can find us out. Power can win when we are ranged against it, but it cannot win us…There was no other way. It takes the full folly and weakness of the cross to find us out and win us back.”

And so on this April Fools’ Day, which has so closely followed the “foolery” of Holy Week, let us not fall prey to the idea that power and dominance will be the way the gospel will win the world. It will be through our suffering as “fool-bearers” and our loving others as “fool-makers” that the gospel will subvert the wisdom and power of the world, and find and win the lost .

 

The Slavery of Too Many Choices

Years ago I went for lunch at a restaurant in Moscow. I sat down; the bread was already on the table (on all the tables), having been put there when the restaurant opened that morning. It was hard as a rock and probably could have been used in self-defense if the KGB ever came after me. I asked the waitress for a menu and she told me that they did not have one. She proceeded to tell me what they were serving and whether I wanted it cold or hot. On the one hand, I was stunned with the fact that I was being told what I was going to eat. On the other hand, it was refreshing that I didn’t have to make a choice— except for the temperature of the food. The Moscow markets were also very limited. People would buy whatever was on the shelves whether they needed it at that time or not. The issue was not one of choice but of supply. When I returned to the US and went into one of our grocery stores, I had a strange feeling of being overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices with which I was again confronted.

Barry Schwartz, the author of The Paradox of Choice (2004) says, “Autonomy and Freedom of choice are critical to our well-being, and choice is critical to freedom and autonomy. Nonetheless, though modern Americans have more choice than any group of people ever has before, and thus, presumably, more freedom and autonomy, we don’t seem to be benefiting from it psychologically.”  That’s an understatement.  Instead of increasing our happiness, too many choices have tended to increase our anxiety. “Am I getting the best deal? Maybe I just won’t choose right now.”  “I’ve got so many interests, how am I ever going to choose what I want to be? Maybe I’ll put that decision on hold and travel.” “I’m afraid that if I get involved in a relationship it might not be with the one I’m supposed to end up with. Maybe I’ll be like Al Paccino in Heat who vowed never to get involved in a relationship he couldn’t walk away from in thirty seconds.” Could it be more than just an Orwellian truth that “Freedom is Slavery?”

The realization of this “paralysis of analysis” has actually found its way into advertising. I was reading one email advertising guru who said that if you’re trying to convince readers to take one action, a single offer is better than multiple ones. “With multiple offers, readers have to decide which product they want to focus on; then, they have to decide whether or not they want to act on that offer. This divides attention between choices and requires more decisions…” [As an aside: I know that purchasing a car can be an overwhelming experience because of all the choices. So a couple of years ago, when I was looking for a newer used vehicle, I used a different tactic.  I prayed for wisdom and then determined beforehand the make and model, the year, the approximate mileage and the price range of the car I wanted. I didn’t care that much about the color or the interior. I sent this information out on the internet to a few dealerships. I visited three of them and bought the car in two weeks.]

James 1:6-8 tells us that when we ask God for something we should ask in faith and not with a double mind; such doubt produces instability in all we do. I read an article awhile ago In Christianity Today written by Barry Cooper, Imprisoned by Choices. He said, “There comes a point when not choosing becomes idolatry. It becomes a lack of trust in the God who ordains the decisions we will make, gathers up the frayed ends, and works all things for our good and his glory. Be wise, but then rest in God’s total sovereignty and goodness, and choose. Commit. Make a decision. Be wholehearted and single-minded.” Martin Luther once said that in view of God’s grace “sin boldly.” Perhaps if he were talking about God’s sovereignty he would have said, “choose boldly.”

Something Greater Than Marriage

The following statement was written by Rosaria Butterfield and Christopher Yuan in response to the recent decision by SCOTUS on gay marriage. Rosaria was a tenured professor at Syracuse and is now a writer, speaker, and mother. She was a lesbian who became a Christian and shares her story in “The Secret Thoughts of An Unlikely Convert.” I am proud to say that Christopher is a friend of mine who teaches at Moody and speaks internationally. He is a gay Christian who tells his story in “Out of a Far Country.” I hope you find what they say helpful:

The Supreme Court of the United States of America has made gay marriage legal in all 50 states, and much of our country celebrates. The world with its rainbow flags waving proudly and plentifully was our world. We locked arms with our LGBT loved ones and friends and believed they were truly and honestly our family of choice.This is the world that we, Christopher and Rosaria, helped build—a world pursuing dignity and equality. The people you see celebrating the recent SCOTUS decision to redefine marriage (and with marriage, personhood) would have been us, not very long ago.

In 1999, when Jesus Christ revealed his saving grace and love to each of us, we learned that our unbelief, and the idolatrous sexual lusts that flowed from it, were no longer matters of personal choice. We accepted that following Jesus meant giving up everything. We understood that repentance meant fleeing from anything that embodied the temptations we knew best and loved most. But even prior to our conversion to Christ, God provided the love and care of Christians, people who became for us a new family, new brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers in Christ—who knew and loved us before we were safe to love. Christians loved, accepted, included, and surrounded us with biblical truth while we were still sinners, thus modeling the Lord himself. Therefore, when the Holy Spirit changed our hearts, we came to know this: the gospel is costly and worth it.

The days after the Supreme Court’s ruling are like the days before it: God is seated on his throne in power and majesty—and one day, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess him.
We affirm that God has ordained marriage to be the union of a husband and a wife, which Jesus himself restated in Mark 10:6–8 and Matthew 19:4–5. But even though some in our culture believe, as Justice Kennedy wrote, that marriage “embodies the highest ideals of love,” we disagree. Earthly marriage does not have a monopoly on love. God is love (1 John 4:7–19). The pinnacle of love is his love for us in Christ. Nothing is greater.

Mystery and Reflection
In actuality, marriage is a mystery and a reflection of a greater reality. The highest ideal of love is Christ’s love for his bride, the church. In Ephesians 5 and Revelation 21, marriage is revealed to be analogous to Christ’s redemption: the marriage consummation between the bride (redeemed sinners) and the groom (Christ) shows all redeemed people are married to Christ. Only in Christ can anyone experience the full definition of love and acceptance. As important as earthly marriage and family are, they are both fleetingly temporary, while Christ and the family of God (the church) are wondrously eternal.

We have failed to show the LGBT community another option to marriage—which is singleness—lived out in the fruitful and full context of God’s community, the family of God. This does not mean, as Justice Kennedy wrote, that singles are “condemned to live in loneliness,” but that singles can have intimate and fulfilling relationships full of love. This is not a consolation prize. It can be just as rewarding and fulfilling as marriage.

Defining marriage as being between a husband and a wife appears unfair to the LGBT community, in part because a life of singleness is seen to be crushingly lonely. Have we in the church inadvertently played into that lie with our idolatry of marriage while being pejorative and silent toward singleness? If singleness is unfair, then it’s no wonder marriage has become a right. Just as the LGBT community appealed to the rest of the world for dignity and respect, it’s time for the church to fight for the dignity and respect of single women and single men.

Defining Moment
Some are now comparing the Supreme Court’s decision on gay marriage with the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision on abortion. Indeed, there is an important lesson for us to learn from the pro-life movement. Today, there are more pro-life young adults than others from previous generations who champion pro-life. When pro-life people, made up of more than just evangelical Christians, began fighting less and caring more for unborn babies and for women with unplanned pregnancies just as they were, a shift in focus brought about an important change. So the question now stands: will we begin caring for the LGBT community just as they are?

This is a defining moment in history. We have a faithful opportunity to shine for the gospel. Will we point people to marriage as the “highest ideal of love”? Or will we point people—whether married or single—to a life of costly discipleship pursuing the embodiment of love, Jesus Christ himself?
The decision is ours to make.

A Fresh Twist to Some Old Proverbs…

Last weekend my wife and I spent some time with three of our grandkids at their home in New Hampshire. They are so special, as are all of my grandchildren. Their energy (whew!), ideas and humor were refreshing, and a great affirmation that their parents are doing a wonderful job in raising them. Speaking of humor, I found this little excercise where a first grade teacher (supposedly) collected well-known sayings. She gave each child in her class the first half then asked them to come up with the remainder of the proverb. Cover up the right side of the following list as you complete the saying on the left; then compare your response to what the kids had to say. Enjoy…

Better to be safe than………………..punch a 5th grader
Strike while the …………………….bug is close
It’s always darkest before…………… daylight savings time
Never underestimate the power of……….termites
You can lead a horse to water but……..how?
Don’t bite the hand that…………….. looks dirty
No news is…………………………..impossible
A miss is as good as a……………….mr.
You can’t teach an old dog new…………math
If you lie down with dogs, you’ll………stink in the morning
Love all, trust……………………..me
The pen is mightier than the…………..pigs
An idle mind is……………………..the best way to relax
Where there’s smoke there’s……………pollution
Happy the bride who…………………..gets all the presents
A penny saved is……………………..not much
Two’s company, three’s………………..the musketeers
Don’t put off till tomorrow what……….you put on to go to bed
Laugh and the whole world laughs with you, cry and…….you have to blow your nose.
None are so blind as………………….Stevie Wonder
Children should be seen and not………..spanked or grounded
If at first you don’t succeed………….get new batteries
You get out of something what you………see pictured on the box
When the blind leadeth the blind……….get out of the way

And the favorite:

Better late than…………………….pregnant.

Speaking of Daylight Savings Time, don’t forget to turn your clocks forward one hour this Sunday. Also, I would appreciate your prayers this week as I am driving with 14 football players from Wheaton College to Selma, Alabama on a missions project trip over spring break. We are leaving this Saturday, which is the 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday”; the day 600 African-Americans were attacked as they walked across the Edmund Pettis Bridge in defiance of segregationist repression of their right to vote. We will be there!