A Kind Grandma, Bill Mahar, and I Discuss Prolife

 I can't tell you how many election cycles ago it was, but it was a long time ago. I was talking to a dear, sweet, older lady. This woman was a life-long Democrat. She had probably voted for Franklin Roosevelt. Clearly she cherished the heritage he had established. John F. Kennedy was rightly admired by her. 

For most of my friend's life, abortion had been a non-issue. The questions related to the life of the unborn were not something that dominated political and ethical conversation the way it does now. All of that changed with the 1973 Roe v Wade decision. Not only was there a legal ruling, that "discovered" a right that had never been seen in the US Constitution before, but an important semantic shift began--a shift that has led to our current situation.

In the past the dominant word that applied to how a mom and a dad, indeed society at large discussed life in the womb, was "responsibility." All of us were expected to behave differentially toward a pregnant woman. Comments like, "You are eating for two, now," were common. At the very pinnacle of acts that marked an army as barbaric was the bayoneting of babies in the womb. Like sand working its way through an hour-glass, a shift took place. If the polls can be trusted the dominant word in the discussion is now "rights." The ethical weight, as seen by a huge portion of our society, is no longer on the side of protecting a baby's life but on protecting a right--which by the way was only recognized in 1973--of the mother.

Getting back to my older friend: She recognized this shift. In particular, she recognized it in the political party to which she was loyal, and in many ways loved. The trend was underway which has led to the overwhelming commitment to a pro-abortion stance by the National Democrat Party. She saw what was happening. She knew that the unwarranted taking of the life of the unborn was wrong. I can still remember the plaintive look on her face, when she asked, "Isn't there just a little bit of room for it?" In the context there was no doubt as to what "it" referred.

Our current situation brings many of us to the same crossroads where that dear lady stood decades ago. We are pulled, or pushed, or, in some cases, bullied in two directions at once. This crossroads was recently clearly identified by someone I don't think I've ever quoted before, Bill Maher.

I can respect the absolutist position. I really can,” he said on HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher.” “I scold the left when they say, ‘Oh, you know what? They just hate women, people who aren’t pro-choice.’ . . . pro-lifers “don’t hate women” and that the opposition “just made that up.

Anti-abortion people “think it’s murder, and it kind of is,” he said on the Friday show. “I’m just OK with that. I am. I mean, there’s 8 billion people in the world. I’m sorry, we won’t miss you. That’s my position on it. (https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/apr/16/bill-maher-inflames-abortion-debate-by-saying-its-/)

How much of this is shock-jock rhetoric and how much is true conviction? I'll leave that to you. I agree, though, with the point Al Mohler made in a recent article. Maher pretty accurately identified the issue. I unequivocally find Mahar's final conclusion repulsive. I see little difference between what he says and the genocidal practices of some arimies that I mentioned earlier. In a sense, though, his candor is appreciated.

As I write, I see that grandma's face and hear her plaintive voice. I don't remember how I answered her question. Maybe I just let it hang as rhetorical. I'd like to think that she answered it correctly. Today, though, how do we answer? I ask that knowing that this is a case where one thing leads to another. The courageous answer may not seem wise and the wise answer may seem cowardly. It's complicated and it's tough. Clearly, though, I must answer with two realities in mind. Maher almost arrived at the first. For me, I must remove the equivocation. Science and a clear understanding of the Bible indicate that the life in the womb is a human being. Unlike Mahar, I do care. I must care. In the same way that I don't want to live in a world where bike-riding seniors (that would be me) can be run over because they are seen by some as being in the way, I don't want to live in a world where womb-dwelling babies can be killed just because someone finds them inconvenient. 

I give Mahar credit. At least he acknowledged the reality. I hear too many trying to give answers as if the reality doesn't exist.

It Does!

Political waters are rough. Don't get blown off course.

 Al Mohler is one of those rare voices that helps us think straight in the midst of winds and currents that come from everywhere and often make us dizzy.

His "Briefing" today, is one of those, "OK, let's sort this out and think about it." pieces that we so desperately need. There are several points in Mohler's commentary that cause many of us, for several different reasons to hit the stop button and go on to something else. I encourage you not to do that. Hear him out. He helps us confirm what's right in the ultimate sense, recognize what's possible in the political sense, and challenges us to honesty in the way we sort it out.
It's worth the listen.
https://albertmohler.com/2024/04/09/briefing-4-9-24/

An Easter Message that is Nothing But Scripture

 I don't know how many times I've heard something like this in my 50+ years of ministry: "I wish you/they/pastors/etc. would just preach the Bible." If you share that opinion, you should be very interested in the message I'll be sharing at Woodland Church on Easter Sunday.

God's Story in His Own Words, is a message made-up entirely of Scripture. It begins with "the beginning," John 1:1, and concludes with the "Amen" of Revelation. It traces God's plan in between. Most of the message is accompanied with pictures, many of them black and white prints by Gustave Dore' that many of you will remember from your first Bible.

I first shared this message on Easter ten years ago. Preachers often say that when they preach they are speaking to themselves first of all. I found this to be undeniably true concerning this message. I would have been glad I had prepared and preached this message even if no one else had been there to hear it. I'm looking forward to sharing it again. From time to time it is valuable to get an aeriel view of the whole forest. It will help you understand what you're seeing when you get back examining one tree at a time.

The graphic below contains information about the Easter Service at Woodland. Below the graphic, I'll share a few more thoughts so you don't get the wrong idea.

1. While I do appreciate the sentiment that preachers should preach the word, I am not saying that every message should be verbatim recitals of Scripture. This message that I'm sharing on Easter Sunday is the only message like this that I've ever done. The messages in Scripture, the Sermon on the Mount, Peter's message on the Day of Pentecost, and Paul's messages in Acts, contain Scripture, are based on the Bible that the speaker had at the time, but they also included the thoughts of the speaker tailored to the need of the moment.
   What I am opposed to, and warn you against, are sermons like the one Charles Spurgeon commented on. He said something like, "If the preacher's text (the portion of the Bible he claimed to be preaching from) had scarlet fever, his sermon would be in no danger of catching it."
   
   
2. If you are considering joining us at Woodland Church for Easter Sunday, I need to make something clear. I don't want to disappoint, offend, or needlessly anger someone, so I share the following: Sometimes when people speak about the "Bible" they are speaking about a particular translation of the Hebrew and Greek that they regard as superior to all other translations. In this message I use several translations, The New Living Translation, The English Standard Version, The New International, the New American Standard Bible, and the King James Version. The NLT is predominant in this presentation. It's use of common Twenty-first Century English flows well for this purpose.
   
   
3. I encourage you to go to your church on Easter. If you don't have a church you call yours, and live in the Fincastle, Troutville, or Daleville area, or just want to take a lovely ride, I encourage you to join us at Woodland. You can find directions on the website.
   
   
4. Here is a Bible passage that is part of the message,
   
   
   "Don't be afraid!" he [the angel] said.
   "I know you are looking for Jesus,
   who was crucified.
   He isn't here!
   He is risen from the dead, just as he said would happen.
   Come see where his body was lying."

Rejoice in that reality.

The Senate Hearing on the Danger of Social Media to Young People

 I didn’t watch the Senate hearing on social media, yesterday. I did hear some of the “gotcha” moments captured and broadcast on radio. I saw a brief interview with one of the committee members in which the senator was shamelessly political—go figure—but was also undeniably right. Social media, platforms like Tik-Tok and Facebook have created an incredible and frightening opportunity for harm to young people.

As parents, as grandparents, as leaders in the moral realm, we simply cannot ignore this.

This morning I read the transcript of Al Mohler’s daily podcast, “The Briefing.” You can listen to or read it here. (A brief disclaimer: Yes, Mohler does sometimes pull the fire alarm lever when he ought to pick up his phone and talk to someone, but I do find him generally helpful as one who watches what’s going on and helps put cultural matters in the grid of a Biblical worldview.) A couple of significant quotations and thoughts from his article:

·       The “Surgeon General of the United States, Vivek Murthy, reported just a matter of months ago . . . there is a massive mental health crisis among American young people.” I wrote about that here. This crisis is not solely the fault of social media, but social media is clearly involved.

·       “. . . social media has created a vulnerability, a danger, for young people that frankly has never existed before in human history.”

·       Those of us of a certain age need to realize that others much younger than we have never known a world without social media. They take it for granted.

·       “ . . . there is moral responsibility in every technology . . .. There's a moral dimension to the development of the wheel. [It] can be used to convey you somewhere . . . it can also be used to crush someone . . .. [E]ven as ancient technology comes with its own moral dimensions, modern technology comes with multiplied moral dimensions, because of the sophistication of the technology, and the immediacy, and the reach.”

So, who owns this moral responsibility?

Clearly in the case of children and teenagers, as in every other realm, parents are responsible. And, at
the risk of eye-rolls and objections I’ll just bluntly say that many parents are grievously avoiding that responsibility. Giving a child unsupervised access to the internet is a lot like letting them play soccer in a mine field.

Yet, even with allowance for the preening and pontificating that is part and parcel of a televised Senate hearing, I think the Senators are right. Those who created and profit from the technology, bear a responsibility as well. In this regard, Mohler observes a “fishy” phenomenon. Folks who usually aren’t all that interested in parental rights, suddenly acting like advocates for parents being responsible to fix the problem. Yes, parents bear the major responsibility for their children, but others in the community—and in this case the community is global—bear responsibility as well.

So what?

I’m not a Luddite. The fact that I’m using the internet to publish my thoughts is evidence of that. But, controls on the power of the web are appropriate. As someone who is well into his adult years, I personally need to reckon with the fact that such controls may sometimes be cumbersome. I think I ought to be willing to pay that price in order to protect the vulnerable.

I appeal to parents. Resist the relentless pressure our culture puts on you, not to mention the whining of your child. Decide when your child should have a cellphone not on the basis of what “everybody else” is doing, but on the basis of what you conclude is best for your child. Do some listening and research before you come to that conclusion. Think about Proverbs 29:15 on this one. Proper discipline gives wisdom, but a child left to himself brings his parent to shame. ( That’s the HM application paraphrase. Look it up in your Bible.)

A general awareness is appropriate. Somewhere between tinfoil-hat paranoia and clueless indifference there is a sweet-spot. We’ll disagree on exactly where on the spectrum that sweet-spot is, but isn’t that what responsible people of faith always do? (See Romans 14) Let’s help each other out. There is an invasion all around us. Sometimes the invader is pernicious. Let’s not act otherwise. Yesterday’s Senate  gallery was filled with parents of abused, and in some cases hounded-to-death children. That is strong encouragement for us to be convinced that we need to link arms on this matter. We should expect our leaders to do something. We need to be willing to endure some cost—be it listening to the teenage whining or jumping through the hoops of proving that I’m not something I haven’t been for more than fifty years, a teenager.

We can do better. We have to.

The on-going question of cremation versus burial:

Here js a brief article that, IMHO, ought to be read by all pastors, and any others who help folks make decisions surrounding the death of a loved one. That includes virtually all of us, sooner or later, so this is a matter that ought to be dealt with as part of a church's teaching. This article touches on a number of points that ought to be further explored and discussed. 

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/cremation-burial-choice/

I encourage you to read the article rather than merely my thoughts about it, but to encourage a conversation, I offer the following:

• Justin Dillehay, a Baptist pastor from Tennessee, does a pretty good job of staying in the road on this tough issue. He avoids the extreme of saying what we do with our dead doesn't matter (for the record, I agree with him. I think it does matter). He maintains that for a long time, standard Western burial practice was referred to as "Christian burial," and that this means something.
  He also refrains from adopting a legalistic tone.  "[I]t’s not that cremation is a violation of a direct biblical command." "[T]here’s no moral prohibition on cremation in the Bible."
• There is no doubt that Dillahay, comes down on the side of maintaining "Christian burial" as the norm for God's people. In doing so, he in no way--that I could see anyhow--drifts into the clearly heretical notion that what we do with the departed loved one's body has any impact on that loved one's eternal state. Though he does make the case for burial, he refrains from saying that cremation is devoid of at least reasonable justification.
• One reasonable justification is cost. At least twice in the article, Dillehay mentions this. He even implies, if not flat-out says, that churches ought to be of some help in this regard.
• While Dillehay does not frame it in these words, his article brings out two important facts about sound Theology: 1) A sound Theology is integrated. Every point of Theology touches on every other point of Theology. Dillehay raises the question, without answering it, as to whether humans are ensouled bodies or embodied souls. I'm not sure those binary choices are adequate, but this is a short article.  That touches on the intermediate state of the dead and the nature of the resurrection and my second observation about the A sound Theology, 2) Sound Theology leads to right practice. One flows from the other.

(Concerning the intermediate state, I found this article that gives an introduction to three views, two of which are quite common. The article does not discuss a fourth view, "soul sleep.")

I'll make three comments that constitute some of my reactions to the article.

1. Dillehay rightly criticizes the "empty shell" descriptions that are often used to describe death, especially in explaining death to children. Yet, he also refers to scriptures that speak of the separation of body and soul. One has to dig deeper on this.
2. While Dillehay speaks of the reality of the financial difference between burial and cremation, he doesn't pursue it much. Actually, that might have strengthened his case. (See below) Given the popular impression that people have about the financial difference between cremation and burial, the financial considerations are huge, bigger than the article admits. (More below)
3. As Pastor Dillehay indicates this is a question that is worth pursuing. Four times in my career it loomed large for me.
   Funerals (and burials) are for the living. Dillehay is right. What we do with the body of a loved one (and what we request be done with our own remains) does say something.
   Fairly early in my pastoral career, a dear saint, someone I look forward to seeing in heaven, died. There were essentially no resources for a funeral, etc. The oldest son, in a very cavalier manner, declared that they would cremate the remains and go on with life. Probably stepping over a line--if not several--I declared that this son might do that to his father, but I wasn't going to allow that to happen to my friend. This man was a loved part of my church and someone who had lived in my home while he recovered from a serious health issue. Even though this was fifty years ago, when cremation was much less socially acceptable, my decision was not that cremation was absolutely wrong. Rather, it came from a conviction that what this son was saying about the worth of his father was definitely wrong. My church stepped up, and while I don't remember the details, my friend was properly honored and buried (not saying he couldn't have been properly honored had his body been cremated).
   Several years ago my wife and I served as missionaries on two different islands half a world away. What my wife would have done had I died "out there," or what I would have done had she died out there obviously remains an unknown. I told my wife, "If I die while we are out here, my recommendation is to have my body cremated. That way you carry my remains back home in a suitcase." Since then I've been told that is technically illegal, though it is often done. Transporting a body by air is quite expensive. 
   The other two experiences have to do with my Mother-in-law and my Mom. Both of these dear Christian ladies died as widows, away from the place where they and the rest of the family wanted them to be buried. Burial was the family consensus in both cases. I knew enough to know that the cost difference between cremation and burial consists not so much in the actual cost of the two procedures but in the cost of the "services" associated with "Christian burial." In both cases, family members transported the body from one state to another themselves. This was done legally and respectfully. Both were buried in inexpensive containers, the industry equivalent of a "plain pine casket." For each, a graveside service was conducted for only close friends and family, while a memorial service sans the body, and a time of visitation, was held at their respective churches. The casket was draped with a cloth out of respect not only for the deceased but for the mourners. At the visitation and memorial service, a picture was in place of the usual casket and body. All was handled with full respect. In fact, concerning one of these women who was known for her thrift in life, the fact that she was buried economically was an honor to her memory. The bottom line was there was little difference in the cost of the burial and what the cost of a cremation would have been.
   In other words, I would say that in addition to the Theological considerations, creative economic alternatives to typical funeral home procedures ought to be explored.

I think your thoughts in the comments could be useful to others who need to guide others through death-related decisions.

Tribute to Faithful Servant that Provides a Critique of Missions Philosophy

 I write this brief post from the guest house on the Campus of Amano Christian School, in Chingola, Zambia. My purpose in coming here is to be an encouragement to some Liebenzell USA missionaries.  Kathy and I are involved with LMUSA.

I've read Kevin Bauder's weekly articles for some time now. During some down-time, here in Africa, I took time to read this week's post. In it, Bauder gives deserved tribute to a faithful missionary who served behind the scenes for many years and, in the end, accumulated a major impact. Likely, like me, you didn't know Richard Redding. However, especially if you are a pastor or someone involved in Great Commission ministry in other ways, I encourage you to read Bauder's piece. In paying tribute to this largely unknown servant, Bauder exposes some troubling trends in current conservative Evangelical mission work, especially regarding who is and who isn't a real missionary.

I saw this during my years of pastoring and working with missions from that perspective. Now as I'm involved in missionary care I see the impact from a new perspective. I encourage you to read the article, it's not long, and draw your own conclusions. I welcome your interaction.

Henry Kissinger and Solomon

 I just heard on the radio that Henry Kissinger, one of the world's most influential people, in the mid-twentieth Century, died at the age of 100. 

The New York Times called him "mesmerizing." He shared the Time Magazine's 1972 title, "Man of the Year," with President Richard Nixon. It is hard to name a world leader of that era with whom Kissinger was not involved. He dated Hollywood starlets and was often the featured character in the news stories of his day. In fact, he and perhaps the best-known journalist of the day, Barbara Walters, were the subject of gossip column rumors.
In a recent interview, marking his 100th Birthday, Ted Koppel commented, "He remains relevant on a global scale." If memory serves me correctly, once in a conversation with Gold Meir, President Nixon said, "We have something in common. We both have Jewish Secretaries of State." To which the Israeli Prime Minister replied, "Yes, but mine speaks better English."  I remember his heavily accented, somewhat mumbly manner of speaking. There was never any doubt, however, that the man was brilliant. Even though I speak more clearly than the former diplomat, I don't recall any two heads of state ever joking about me.

Kissinger's life is an apt illustration of the Bible Book of Ecclesiastes. He had everything, but in the end, he died. 

   “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.” (Ecclesiastes 12:13–14, ESV)