Fort Hood Massacre

     I don’t want to write much today. I just want to suggest that we pray for the families of the dead at Fort Hood. Let’s also pray for the wounded to recover.

Jesus Is Not a Democrat (or a Republican)

     Let me make one thing perfectly clear right away. I have never believed that the Republican Party was the Christian party or that Jesus would support the Republican Party and reject the Democratic Party.  There is a lot of overlap between my Christian faith and my political views, but I do not confuse the two.  It is my opinion that the platform of the Republican Party during my lifetime has been more compatible with Christian faith (though decreasingly so), but I know that other Christians have the opposite view.  Let each person decide according to his or her own knowledge and conscience.  If Jesus were living in the United States in human form, I do not believe that He would join either party.  I am not sure that he would even say much about them.  He might just ignore the whole business altogether.

     Throughout the centuries, all kinds of groups have tried to co-opt Jesus for their political views–monarchists, classical liberals, revolutionaries, fascists, socialists, anarchists, neo-conservatives, etc.  Each one usually makes a persusaive case for why they are the group that supports Jesus and that has his support, but they obviously cannot all be right.  In my humble opinion, Jesus would find something to approve in each of the various political ideologies and something (probably much) to condemn in each of them, as well. 

     Jesus might approve of the monarchists’ use of authority to enforce just laws, but he might disapprove of the oppression that many monarchs have engaged in against their own subjects.  He might approve of the revolutionaries’ concern for the common person, but he might disapprove of their use of violence.  He might approve of the neo-conservatives’ desire to lessen the tax burden on working people, but he might disapprove of their lack of concern for the poor.  (I wrote might in each case, because I do not think that anyone should speak with certainty on such matters.  Who are we to put words into Jesus’s mouth?)

     Even when they do not actually claim Jesus for their cause, almost every group contends that it espouses the absolute moral and just set of values to make the world a better place.  It amounts to the same thing as co-opting Jesus (or Allah or Krishna or Zeus or whomever).  I am not saying that they should not believe in their cause or consider it right; I am trying to say that they should realize that others make the same claim.  They, whoever they are, must be willing to have a peaceful competition with other groups who espouse other ideologies, if we are to have any kind of liveable world or society.

     I was somewhat caught up in the conservative Christian movement of the 1980’s.  I made the error of conflating my Christian faith with my American citizenship.  Although, they are inextricably entwined, they are not identical.  I know that now.  One reason I know it is that my Democratic friends have gently reminded me of it. 

     Now the tables are turned.  Many Democrats are acting like they are part of the God party.  For the last thirty years or so, I have heard it preached over and over again that it is wrong to mix politics and religion and that the Republican Party is not the party of God.  Just when I and others started to get it, all of a sudden liberal Christians, including our current President, have taken to citing Jesus for their cause.  When not claiming to speak for Jesus, per se, they are telling us what our moral imperatives are.  Whoa!  What happened to not mixing religion and politics?  What happened to not legislating morality?

     I am not saying that it is absolutely wrong for folks to the left of center to believe that the teachings of Jesus support their views, only that it is hypocritical to say that those on the right may not do so but those on the left may.

     It really bugs me when some non-Christians and some apostate Christians to tell Christians what they should think or do.  Some examples that I have encountered include the quoting of Jesus’s words, “Judge not,” as a way of shutting Christians up.  Some people apparently think that the command not to judge (condemn, actually) means that we cannot call something wrong or work to prohibit behaviors that are immoral.  (Of course, that is precisely what the folks who tell us not to judge do–for example, prohibiting smoking in public places or prohibiting prayer in school.)  Another example, is quoting Jesus’s remark about rendering taxes to Caesar as proof that we should support government welfare.  Never mind that Rome provided nothing like our American welfare programs to the Jews and that Jesus’s words were simply a way to avoid the trap of a political argument, which is why I contend that He would not be either a Democrat or a Republican, and never mind that His greater point is found in what He said next:  “. . .and render to God what is God’s.”  He meant you.  He was saying that you and I and everyone else, should give ourselves and our lives to God, and that doing so is more important than the relatively unimportant question of whether to pay taxes to an oppressive occupying government.  Funny that liberals want to quote the first part of Jesus’s saying but ignore the second part.  (Actually it’s not funny, just strange.)

     So, please, stop it!  If you think that Jesus is on your side, be very careful.  He is probably partly on your side and partly on the side of your political adversaries.  If you ar not actually following all His teachings, then don’t throw selected ones in people’s faces.  He probably does not care much what your political views are or what the opposing political views are.  He cares about things that are much higher and much deeper than that.  Mostly he cares about you and about your status with Him.

Should Christian Schools Show THE Speech?

     Craig Dunham at Second Drafts thinks that Christian schools should show President Obama’s speech to their students. 

     He writes:

At some point, Christians have got to stop putting the mental in fundamentalist and start interacting with the world.  Teaching our kids to stick their heads in the sand and ignore anyone they may not totally agree with is, in a word, unChristian.

I agree.  How about you?

Great Grace

     God’s grace is amazing, as the famous hymn says.  However, I have recently encountered some people who have a somewhat distorted view of God’s grace.  It’s understandable.  Most Christians that I have ever known seem to struggle to keep God’s grace in the proper perspective, myself included.  This problem must go all the way back to the early days of the faith, since the Apostle Paul wrote about it so extensively in his epistles, especially the epistle to the Romans.

     One of the notions that I have encountered is that one must believe either in a “God of grace” or in a “God of works.”  That is, some people seem to think that we must either accept salvation as the gift of God and not worry about our behavior, or we must live by a strict moral code and reject salvation as a gracious gift.  The Bible I read indicates that both things are necessary.  Yes, God saves us by grace, his unearned favor, and by grace alone, through our faith in the atonement provided by Jesus on the cross.  However, he tells those of us who have received that grace to live by a certain set of standards that includes loving and forgiving others, caring for the poor and sick, living sexually pure lives, and praying and worshiping God.  He does not say that those things are optional, either.

     Recognizing that God has expectations of us does not undo his grace, especially once we grasp the proper way to view those expectations.  We should not see God’s commands as a way to earn His love; He already loves us.  We should not see them as a way to achieve a state of righteousness in God’s eyes; God bestows righteousness on us when we accept Jesus as our Savior.  God’s commands are, first, a privilege that His children get to follow and, second, a blessing that God gave us in love, because they are designed to give us joy and peace.

     Living a life devoted to God and in obedience to his commands is called holiness.  It seems to be a missing element in the lives of some of the young Christians that I have encountered recently.  They live, think, and talk very much as non-Christians do, and they justify their actions by saying that they are living in God’s grace.

     I am not talking about an attitude of superiority or self-righteousness.  I am not talking about things like how long one’s hair should be or whether one watches PG-13 movies.  Rather, I am talking about a way of thinking about every aspect of life.  Rather than live haphazardly, a Christian should consider every thought, word, and action in light of what God says about it.

     It’s sad to me that people think that God’s grace is an excuse to live an unexamined, unconsidered life–possibly even a life of sin.  Saint Paul specifically said that we should not live in sin just because God has forgiven our sins and extended grace to us.  In fact, the opposite attitude is the right one:  because we are grateful to God for His grace, we should follow the commands that  he gives us cheerfully, knowing that they are in our best interest.

God Does NOT Hate People

     The Bible lists some things that God hates, and none of them is a person or people.  God hates, according to Proverbs 6:17-19, a proud look, a lying tongue, murderous hands, a wicked heart, mischievous feet, a false witness, and a divisive spirit.  In other words, God hates evil actions and behaviors.  He does not hate people.

     God hates sin, but He does not hate sinners.  If He did, then He would hate us all, since, as the Bible teaches, all people have sinned.  The Bible is explicit that God loves everyone in the world, and that doctrine is the basis for so many important Bible precepts.  God loved the world so much that He sent His Son to earth to procure atonement for us.  Jesus loved people so much that He gave up His life to save us, even while we were in rebellion against Him.  God expects us to love other people, since He loved us and to prove that we love Him.

      Love is a major theme, if not the primary theme, of the Bible.  It is the greatest virtue.  It is part of the two Great Commands:  love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as you love yourself.

     Not only are Christians forbidden to hate other people, but the Bible, particularly in I John, indicates that if we hate others we are lying to ourselves and others about following God at all.  I John 4:7-8 says, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love comes from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.  He who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

     If you hear a Christian saying that God hates anyone, that person is mistaken at best and an enemy of God at worst.  If you hear a Christian saying that he or she hates somebody, that person is also either very badly mistaken or maybe even completely reprobate.  It is likely that the person is not a Christian at all, or at least has no right to claim the title.

     To love in the Bible is to want the very best for another person.  It is to wish only God’s blessings upon them and to hope ultimately that they become a child of God, if they are not already one.  It is to be willing to put their needs before one’s own and to serve and help them in whatever way is needed.

     Biblical love does not preclude scolding or reproving.  In fact, the Bible makes it clear that parents, government authorities, and church leaders have the authority to discipline people and to enforce consequences as needed.  In fact the Bible indicates that God chastises the ones that He loves, just as a Father does. 

     Biblical love does not preclude upholding the truth.  If people state that certain behaviors are sins, according to the Bible, that is not an expression of hatred toward other people.  In fact, the very ones who uphold the truth on sin are sinners themselves.  They are not speaking from a vantage pont of superiority but of identification.  Who better to warn others of sin and its consequences than people who have been caught in its trap themselves?

     Finally, Biblical love does not preclude political activism, at least in my opinion.  I am first and foremost a follower of Jesus and a citizen of God’s kingdom.  However, I am also a citizen of the United States of America, and as such I have the same rights as anyone else.  Not only is it my right to try to shape the course of our country, but it is my duty to particiapte in the political process.  Loving people does not mean that I must deny my religious or political views in order to make other people happy–anymore than they must deny their religious or political views to make me happy.

     That’s the difference between me and some other people that I debate with.  I don’t consider people to be hating me when they oppose me politically or when they disagree with me on religious or spiritual matters.  I don’t really see that it has anything to do with either love or hate.  It has to do with trying to help set policies under which we will live.  And everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion on which policies are best.

     In fact I am worried about portraying the people on one side of any debate “haters.”  Logically speaking, both must hate, since they both oppose each other.  Each side has its goals and desires, and neither side should be compelled to yield in the name of love or be threatened into it by being called haters.  It is bringing the level of public discourse and debate way down to call people bigots and haters because they have a different opinion from you.  May the practice cease!

Not Afraid of Freud

WARNING:  Longer-than-usual post.  You might not want to read it all. 

    What would Sigmund Freud say if he were alive today?  For that matter, what would Nietzsche, Marx, or Camus say?  I wonder what they would think about the robustness of Christian belief in the 21st Century.  What would they say, not only about a resurgence of evangelicalism in the United States and Europe, but also about the current spread of Evangelical Christianity throughout Africa, Asia, and South America?

     Freud thought that belief in God was a simple matter of projecting onto the vast cosmos our deep longing for an ultimate father-figure.  He and other intellectuals of his day believed that we were approaching a time when belief in God, at least in the West, would be finally rejected because of the triumph of science and logic.

     I think you could say that Freud and other intellectuals of the early 20th Century believed that Western society was growing up and leaving behind childish superstitions.  What would they say if they were alive now?  I expect that they would be surprised and a bit frustrated, just as many intellectuals of our day are frustrated that belief in God not only lingers but thrives.  I think that they would wonder what went wrong.

     Freud’s dismissal of Christianity does not defeat it for me.  Let me list my reasons.

The Judges Versus the Little Boy

     In Philadelphia a court decided to tell a little boy that he cannot regard the Bible as his favorite book.  Well, not really.  They apparently ruled that the boy could not bring it to class as part of a show-and-tell activity where the students were to bring their favorite book. 

     I cannot imagine any adults doing that to a boy in kindergarten.  I really cannot imagine a group of judges thinking that it is crucial to our American civilization to ban a Bible from a classroom. 

     Perhaps they should read the Constitution.  It’s apparently not their favorite document.

UPDATE:  The students were given an open invitation to have their parents come to class and read from their favorite book.  I still am appalled that two of the three justices of the 3rd Circuit believe it is their job to tell a little boy what his favorite book should or should not be.  The third justice wrote that the school engaged in viewpoint discrimination.  In the words of Scott Erb (see comments), “D’oh.” 

By the way, I do not take this position because it was a Bible.  If little Karim had brought a Koran for his mom or dad to read, I would also support his freedom of religion and freedom of expression.  That’s what freedom means–being free.  It doesn’t mean doing only what is politically correct.  Only if a person’s behavior harms somebody should it be legally curtailed.

Not Right

     Dr. George Tiller was murdered in his church in Wichita, Kansas.  I hope and pray that the murderer is brought to justice.  The police have a suspect in custody already.

     I want to state unequivocally that what the murderer did was immoral, unethical, unbiblical, ungodly, and thoroughly and completely wrong.  Even if you believe that abortion is the moral equivalent of murder, you do not fight it by murdering.  If our country’s laws were humane and civil, we would already have outlawed the practice of Dr. Tiller, and he either would not have engaged in it or he would have been the one headed to prison.

     What Tiller did was wrong.  Make no mistake.  He was not providing emergency care to rape or incest victims.  He was not treating sick women with appropriate medical procedures.  He was performing late-term abortions, which means that he was destroying fetuses that might have survived outside the womb.  In other words, he was killing babies.  Many of his victims were at the exact same stage of development as thousands of people who were born early–often by Cesarean section–and who have gone on to live successful, meaningful lives.  Had the mothers chosen the harder course, the hospital would have been registering it as a birth rather than as an elective abortion.

     It is true that many of his victims were ill or deformed.  What they needed was treatment, not destruction.  If they were beyond treatment, then they needed a natural, dignified passing.  Is that too much to ask for any human being?

     It is also true that many of the mothers were at risk themselves.  In such cases, I would side with protecting the mother’s life.  However, why choose?  Why not deliver the baby early and give it a fighting chance?  If he or she dies anyway, both the doctor and the mother can live at peace with the knowledge that they tried.  I really cannot think of a situation where such an abortion must be performed.

     Nevertheless, nobody had the right to murder Tiller.  It is the job of the civil government to prosecute and punish lawbreakers, and in our country Tiller was breaking no laws.  What a shame!  Whoever killed him might have mistakenly thought that he was serving God in so doing or that he was avenging the deaths of all those babies.  It’s also possible that the killer was mentally ill and not fully responsible for the horrible act.  We’ll have to wait and see.

     In the meantime, all the pro-life people need to stand up and denounce the act as completely and thoroughly wrong.  We cannot claim to be pro-life and then murder somebody.  We cannot claim to be law-abiding citizens and then live by vigilanteism.  We cannot claim to follow Christ and falsely claim the right to judge others and exact vengeance on them.

Hope

     I’m thinking today about hope.  Hope is the middle child among the Christian virtues:  faith, hope, and love (I Corinthians 13:13).  As the middle child it is harder to pin down than the other two.  Hope is more nebulous.  It seems like a vague feeling, although, we are told, the virtues are rooted in the will, not in the passions.

     Hope is not the greatest virtue or the great commandment.  Love is.  Love, as used in the Bible, is the willing, happy choice to put the needs and wants of another person before one’s own.  We are to love God with our whole being and love our fellow person as much as we love ourselves.  I get love.  I love love.

     Hope is not the basis of salvation.  Faith is.  Faith, in the Bible, is trust in God and reliance upon Him and His promises.  It is choosing to believe what God has said before it comes to be or without absolute proof.  I get faith.  I believe in faith.

     Hope is tricky.  What I get about it is that is stronger than a wish, especially a baseless wish.  It is more of an expectation of something that we believe can and likely will happen.

     Hope, as used in the Bible, is the confident expectation of some future event, particularly the future advent of Jesus, the resurrection of the body, and our eternal dwelling in heaven.  Whereas faith pertains to the here-and-now as well as to the future, hope specifically pertains to what we do not yet have or see. 

      Hope is the choice to look forward to that which God has promised and which we believe will happen.  It is intrisically connected to faith.  “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, . . .” (Hebrews 11:1)

     Our hope is primarily in Jesus Himself.  He has promised to return, and we eagerly await that day.  He has promised that we will see Him face to face and will be with Him forever, and we look forward to it the way that a bride looks foward to being with her groom.  We have denied ourselves, taken up our cross, and followed Him, and someday our reward will be union with Him.  He will give us rewards, yes, but He Himself is the main reward.

     Our secondary hope is heaven.  Jesus promised that He was going ahead to prepare a place for us, just as the groom prepares a place for the bride to live with him.  Heaven is a place where sin and death are no more.  It is a place of joy and peace.  It is a place of glory.  It is there that we will bask in the light that radiates from Jesus and we will be transformed.  We will be perfect, as He is perfect.  I can hardly wait, but I hope as I wait.

More About Forgiveness

     One of my regular readers, American Elephant, asked some questions about forgiveness.  I said I would write out my answers in another post.  So here’s that post.  I plan to give a Christian answer to his questions, but I do not present it as the Christian answer.  As Scott, another reader, has pointed out, there are different ways to interpret the Bible on various issues.  I hope that what I present below is the right interpretation.  It might not be.