One More Reason to Support A Door of Hope

Did you see the recent piece done on A Door of Hope by Delaware Online? Pray for them as they get their new Middletown location up and running.

Speaking of ADOH, at one of their fundraising events last year, Eric Metaxes was the speaker. One of the things I remember him saying is this: 

"The better they do their job, the more money they need (not the more they make!). It’s not that way at Planned Parenthood. That’s a for profit organization."

Just one more reason you should support A Door of Hope.

Explicit Tattoos In Church

Russell Moore recently pondered a childhood episode when he saw an unsavory fellow in the pew in front of him with an x-rated tattoo on his arm. This guy was "known" for his hard living. After telling the story of his reaction, and his grandmother's response, he asks a great, thought-provoking question:

"Could the next Billy Graham be drunk right now?"

He goes on to write:

The next Billy Graham might be drunk right now. The next Jonathan Edwards might be the man driving in front of you with the Darwin Fish bumper decal. The next Charles Wesley might currently be a misogynistic, profanity-spewing hip-hop artist. The next Charles Spurgeon might be managing an abortion clinic today. ...

I encourage you to read the whole thing. It's great application of Jesus' words in Luke 5:32:

"I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance."

You and I Need to Need

Eugene Peterson:

We human beings learn early and quickly to acquire expertise in using our plight, whatever it is, to get those around us to do far more than get us through or over the conditions. We learn how to use the conditions of need as leverage in getting our own way. Not our health, not our maturity, not our peace, not justice, not our salvation, but our way, out willful way. This impulse to make oneself the center, to shrewdly, or bullyingly manipulate things and people to the service of self is what we, at least in our theology textbooks, call sin. Incurvatus in se was Augustine’s phrase for it, life curved in upon itself.

We are created to be open. To be open to God, to open out towards our neighbors. We can only be whole and healthy in so far as we do this. When we are in need, ... [Our n]eed rips gashes in our self-containment and opens us to the neighbor. Need blows holes in our roofed-in self-sufficiency and opens us to God. But not necessarily.

For the self-willed self does not give up easily. It makes a persistent and determined stand to use these need-generated openings not to move out, but to pull whoever is trying to help it, into its service, put the neighbors to its use.

-- Subversive Spirituality, “Teach Us to Care, Teach us Not to Care,” p 158 (emphasis added).

The Gospel and Caring For the Elderly

What does the gospel have to do with caring for the elderly?

Everything, says Russell Moore, a self-proclaimed "recovering social Darwinist." He recently spent a few difficult days getting his grandmother moved into a care home and shares some very helpful reflections.

How Do You Prepare For Suffering and Persecution?

Such a good word from Kevin DeYoung (emphasis added):

How will the church of Jesus Christ respond when the things that the church must believe are considered laughable, backwards, or worse? ...  

You cannot plan for opposition, at least not in the way we might think. You cannot plan for it by ruminating and worrying about it, or by making yourself miserable now so you’ll be prepared to suffer later, or by fearfully anticipating the worse in every situation. 

The only way to prepare for persecution (however big or small) is to trust that if that day comes there will be new mercies on that morning for you. The only way to prepare to walk with Jesus on that day is to walk with him on this day. 

The best preparation is not to meditate on yourself. What would I be like if I were persecuted? Would I be a coward? Will I be terrified?  Sometimes we think, “If I suffer or get cancer or something bad happens to me, I’d be a wreck. I won’t be able to handle it. If persecution comes my way, or people think poorly of me, or if I have to deal with hatred in the classroom, I will surely fail.” But that’s putting the focus in the wrong place. The answer is not to meditate on yourself, but to meditate on Christ. 

If you want to have a face like an angel on the day of trial, you need to reflect the glory of God now. If you want to see the Son of God in the clouds on your last day, you need to look upon the face of the Son of God on this day. 

Be full of faith. Be full of wisdom. And pray for the Holy Spirit that you may know Christ richly, love him sweetly, and be assured of his grace and mercy to you at all times. If that is deep in your hearts, then how could you possibly deny him? How could you turn from him? How could you reject Him? He is your only comfort in life and in death.

A Profound Dialogue with a Gay Activist

This is profound at several levels. I wish the conversation hadn't ended there. We all could benefit from more candid, yet respectful, personal conversations with people who have very different beliefs.

Roman Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft recalls a conversation he once had:

My teacher was an articulate homosexual activist who was arguing, at Boston College, that “Catholic” and “gay” are as compatible as ham and eggs. I respected the clarity and intelligence of his mind and the openness and apparent goodwill of his heart, so I hoped that our conversation might open and clarify both our minds and teach us something new. (This almost never happens when these two sides argue about this subject.)

I was not disappointed.

I shall try and reconstruct our dialogue with a minimum of additions and polishings, as I like to believe Plato did to Socrates in his early dialogues. For purposes of anonymity, I shall call my dialogue partner “Art.”

PETER: Art, I’m really curious about one point of your argument, one part I just don’t understand. And I believe in listening before arguing, as you said you do. So I’m not trying to argue now—that’s not the point of my question—but first of all to listen and to understand. OK?

ART: Of course. What’s the point you don’t understand?

PETER: Well, to explain that, I have to ask you to listen too, to where I’m coming from.

ART: And where’s that?

PETER: Just the teachings of the Bible and the Church, all of them. I know you don’t believe all of them, only some. But I do. So from my point of view, what you do, and what you justify doing, is a sin. That’s the label you reject, right?

ART: Right. So what don’t you understand?

PETER: Please don’t take this as a personal insult, or even an argument, but I know of no other way of phrasing it than with biblical language, which you will probably find offensive. My question is this: Why are you guys the only class of sinners who not only deny that your sin is sin but insist on identifying yourself with it? We’re all sinners, in one way or another, and I’m not assuming your sins are worse than mine, but at least I think I’m more than my sins, whatever they are. I love the sinner but hate the sin. But you don’t do you?

ART: No, I don’t. What I hate is that hypocritical distinction.

PETER: Why?

ART: Because when you attack homosexuality, you attack homosexuals. It’s that simple.

PETER: But alcoholics don’t say that the Church attacks alcoholics when she attacks alcoholism. And cowards don’t say that they are their cowardice. And murderers don’t say the church is hypocritical for condemning their sin but no them, the sinners. Adulterers don’t deny the distinction between the adulterer and the adultery. The only group of sinners I’ve ever heard of who do this is you. And it seems to me you all do that, you always say that. All gays say that. Don’t they?

ART: Yes, we do. And I forgive you for being so insensitive that you don’t realize that you’ve done right now what you defend the Church for doing: insulting and rejecting me, and not just what I do.

PETER: Wait a minute here! You’re saying that when I make that distinction between what you are and what you do, when I accept what you are as distinct from what you do, I’m rejecting what you are? How can I be rejecting what you are in accepting what you are?

ART: That’s exactly what you’re doing. In fact, you’re trying to kill me.

PETER: What? That’s crazy. Now you’re being paranoid.

ART: No, listen: In trying to separate what I do from what I am, you’re trying to separate my body from my soul, my sex life from my identity. That’s what you’re doing by insisting on that distinction. Your distinction between what you call the “sinner” and the “sin” is really death to me; it’s the separation of body and soul, deed and identity. I’m holding the two together; you’re trying to pull them apart, and that’s death.

PETER: That’s sophistical. That’s an argument that just doesn’t fit the facts. Look at the facts instead of the argument. This is what the church believes about you—what I believe about you: you can be a saint! You have dignity. The Church thinks more highly of you than you think of yourself. She loves your being more than you do; that’s why she hates your sins against your being. We believe your self is greater than your deeds, whatever they are. But you don’t.

ART: The Church and the Bible will tell me I’m an abomination to God.

PETER: No! Not in your person, only in your sins, just like the rest of us, like all of us. That’s Paul’s point in Romans 1. He’s condemning hypocritical condemnation of pagan homosexuals by straight Jews just as much as he’s condemning pagan homosexuality.

ART: The Church is my enemy.

PETER: The Church is your friend. Because the Church tells us two things about you, not just one, and she will never change either one, she never can change either one, because both are matters of unchangeable natural law, based on eternal law, based on the very nature of God. She can’t ever say that what you do is good for the same reason that she can’t ever say that what you are is bad. She defends your being just as absolutely as she attacks your lifestyle; she hates your cancer because she loves your body. It’s the same authority for both. The authority you hate when it condemns what you do is your only reliable ally in defending what you are. You want the Church to change her teaching on what you do, and you’re trying to put social pressure on her to do that, but if she did that, then she could change her teaching on what you are, too, for the same reason, under social pressures. I’m sure you know that the old social pressures to hate homosexuals are far from dead. You know what happened in Hitler’s Germany. You know how changeable and fickle mankind is—and how dangerous. When the last bastion of absolute moral law is compromised, when even the Church bends to the winds of social pressure, what shelters will you have then?

ART: I’m not worried about the Left; I’m worried about the Right.

PETER: Today, maybe, but what about tomorrow? Today the fashion is the be Leftist, but just a short time ago the fashion was from the Right, and tomorrow it may swing to the Right again, like a pendulum. You can’t rely on fashionable opinions to protect you. That’s building sandcastles. The tides always change and knock them down.

ART: I’ll take my chances, thank you. I don’t know what will happen in the future, I grant you that. But I know what’s happening now, and I can’t take that. We just can’t take your “love the sinner, hate the sin” distinction. That much we know.

PETER: You still haven’t explained to me why. I began by asking that question, and I really want an answer. I want to know what’s going on in your mind.

ART: OK, I think I can explain it to you. You say I shouldn’t feel threatened by that distinction, right?

PETER: Right.

ART: You say the Church tells me she loves me, even though she hates what I do, right?

PETER: Right.

ART: Well, suppose the shoe was on the other foot. Suppose you were in the minority. Suppose what you wanted to do was to have churches and sacraments and Bibles and prayers, and those in power said to you: “We hate that. We hate what you do. We will do all in our power to stop you from doing what you do. But we love you. We love what you are. We love Christians, we just hate Christianity. We love worshippers; we just hate worship. And we’re going to put every possible pressure on you to feel ashamed about worshipping and make you repent of your sin of worshiping. But we love you. We affirm your being. We just reject your doing.” Tell me, how would that make you feel? Would you accept their distinction?

PETER: You know, I never thought of it that way. Thank you. You really did make me see things in a new way. You’re right. I would not be comfortable with that distinction. I would not be able to accept it. In fact, I would say pretty much what you just said: that you’re trying to kill my identity.

ART: See? Now you understand how we feel.

PETER: Yes, I think I do. Thank you very much for showing me that. But do you realize what you’ve just said? What you’ve just showed me?

ART: What do you mean?

PETER: You’ve said to me that sodomy is your religion.

 HT: JT

The Ironic Similarity Between Magic and Technology

C.S. Lewis often helps us see through the smoke and mirrors of our age:

There is something which unites magic and applied science [i.e. technology] while separating both from the 'wisdom' of earlier ages.

For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue.

For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique...

—The Abolition of Man 

The Only Man With the Right to These Words

Psalm 22:1:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

If you think about it, Jesus Christ is the only man who can truly utter these words.

Christians sometimes feel forsaken by God. They wonder where God is in their suffering and pain. King David certainly did when he penned these words, but he was not truly forsaken. He is the same man who wrote, “most certainly goodness and mercy will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” David deserved to be forsaken for his sin, yet because of God’s covenantal mercy and steadfast love, he was never truly forsaken. If the promises of God can be trusted, then the promise, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” cannot be broken. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. 

Others may feel forsaken by God. If Jesus is not their Savior, they cannot truly say, “My God, my God!" God is not their god. Someone or something else has first place in their heart and life. No wonder they feel forsaken by their gods. They are no gods at all and they are impotent to help and save. If they accusingly ask God, “Why have you forsaken me?” He has every right to respond, “Forsaken you? You refuse to trust me. You have forsaken me. You are on the path of your own choosing. I am only giving you what your rebellion deserves."

Only Jesus Christ can truly utter those lines. Only he can say, “MY God…MY God, Why have you forsaken ME?" He was THE Son of God. He was perfectly faithful to His Father. And the Father turned his face away. He didn’t just feel forsaken. He really was forsaken. And all so that God-forsakers like us, who trust in Jesus to save them from just condemnation, will never, ever, ever be forsaken.

When Pro-Life Rubber Meets the Road

Mobile Care Units. This is a GREAT idea. Check out this article about what the Pregnancy Resource Center is doing in Charlotte.

THIS is a Teacher

This is a beautiful embodiment of 1 Timothy 1:5 (in more than one way):

"The goal of our instruction is love..."

What do you like about Sunday School? from seeJesus on Vimeo.

HT: JT