Page 34 of 76

Further Thanksgiving Thoughts

November 24, 2016 / Allan Babcock

“Further” because I already shared some yesterday. Surprisingly my old mind has a few more.

Memories. Cheering our local high school football team. Worshiping at the community
Thanksgiving services. Eating feasts—one with Lois’ parents, one with mine. So many blessings with our young family. Wish I could go back.

I think today, too, of suffering people—parents grieving over a child lost to war or gun violence; the widow with the love-of-her-life’s chair empty; the father diagnosed with cancer afraid this may be his last Thanksgiving with his family. Hospitals are filled today. Today, on Thanksgiving, people will die.

Morose? Guess I’m emotionally caught between the blessings of younger years and so much suffering I see. Into that unsettling mix comes the apostle Paul’s admonition . . .

“Be joyful always, pray at all times, be thankful in all circumstances. This is what God wants from you in your life in union with Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, GNT).

This is what God wants from us: always joyful! at all times praying! in all circumstances thankful! Whether stuffing down a Thanksgiving feast surrounded by our young family or chomping down a peanut butter sandwich alone and hurting.

God wants this from us, not to earn points, but because he’s made this possible for his honor and our joy. “This is what God wants from you in your life in union with Christ Jesus.” Our Holy Spirit-connection with Christ has not only given us reasons to “be thankful in all circumstances”, but power to “be thankful in all circumstances.”

Reasons? Regardless of circumstances, we are God’s children in Christ Jesus. He’s with us in Christ Jesus. He’s coming for us in Christ Jesus. We’ll live with him forever in a new creation in Christ Jesus. I could go on . . .

Awareness of those reasons helps us be thankful in all circumstances. “Count your many blessings; name them one by one” we used to sing. Good advice. There are times, though, when present pain smothers good reasons. Reasons make it reasonable to give thanks in hard times. But hurting can overpower logic. It’s then we need power to give thanks. And in union with Christ Jesus, we have it.

May I make a confession though? Sometimes, for me at least, power isn’t there. What then? A suggestion: since we know giving thanks is what God wants (for his honor and our good), but the circumstances strangle the thanksgiving in our throat, pray for the Spirit’s power!

“O God, I know you want me to be joyful today. I know you want me to give thanks today even though my body aches and my mind is filled with doubts. And I know I have good reasons (yes, plural) to do what you want. But I can’t. Not by myself. So please, Holy Spirit, empower me. Give me a ‘shot’ of joy. Grant me a grateful heart that overflows with thanksgiving from my lips. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”

What’s the “big deal” about “thank you, God”? In his latest blog (http://www.albertmohler.com/2016/11/23/thanksgiving-theological-act-mean-give-thanks/), Dr. Albert Mohler, calls thanklessness “the primal sin” . . .

“After making clear that God has revealed himself to all humanity through the created order, Paul asserts that we are all without excuse when it comes to our responsibility to know and worship the Creator. He wrote:

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. . . [Romans 1:20-22].

This remarkable passage has at its center an indictment of thanklessness. They did not honor Him as God or give thanks. Paul wants us to understand that the refusal to honor God and give thanks is a raw form of the primal sin. Theologians have long debated the foundational sin — and answers have ranged from lust to pride. Nevertheless, it would seem that being unthankful, refusing to recognize God as the source of all good things, is very close to the essence of the primal sin. What explains the rebellion of Adam and Eve in the Garden? A lack of proper thankfulness was at the core of their sin. God gave them unspeakable riches and abundance, but forbade them the fruit of one tree. A proper thankfulness would have led our first parents to avoid that fruit at all costs, and to obey the Lord’s command. Taken further, this first sin was also a lack of thankfulness in that the decision to eat the forbidden fruit indicated a lack of thankfulness that took the form of an assertion that we creatures — not the Creator — know what is best for us and intend the best for us.

They did not honor Him as God or give thanks. Clearly, honoring God as God leads us naturally into thankfulness. To honor Him as God is to honor His limitless love, His benevolence and care, His provision and uncountable gifts. To fail in thankfulness is to fail to honor God — and this is the biblical description of fallen and sinful humanity. We are a thankless lot.

Sinners saved by the grace and mercy of God know a thankfulness that exceeds any merely human thankfulness. How do we express thankfulness for the provision the Father has made for us in Christ, the riches that are made ours in Him, and the unspeakable gift of the surpassing grace of God? As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, ‘Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift'” [2 Corinthians 9:15].

So there they are—“further thanksgiving thoughts”. I’m done. Thanksgiving Day is just about over. All that’s left, then, is to give thanks . . .

God in a Letter

November 22, 2016 / Allan Babcock

The Bible isn’t a theology book. At least not a typical one.

Take Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology, for example. It’s divided into seven major doctrines: The Doctrine of the Word, of God, of Man, of Christ and the Holy Spirit, of the Application of Redemption, of the Church and of the Future. Each doctrine-part contains five to eleven chapters with detailed discussions around appropriate Scriptures.

Open the Bible to the “Contents” page and, instead of theological topics, we find “books”. A “Study Bible” may group them by genre: law, history, poetry, prophecy, gospel, letters, etc. In vain we look for a chapter devoted to God’s grace or the work of the Holy Spirit. Doctrinal teachings lie scattered throughout the pages in all sorts of settings—from the garden of Eden to Israel’s wilderness wanderings to the reigns of kings to prayers, wars and the new creation.

God revealed himself not in sacred lecture, but in words spoken and works done in “ordinary” human life. True, he ordained law on the summit of the fearful “mountain of God”. And, yes, he gave the Book of Revelation in a bizarre vision to the apostle John. But the majority of his Old Testament revelation came in words and works among the nation of Israel. He supremely revealed himself in the person of his Son who “became a human being and lived among us” (John 1:14). And the majority of God’s New Testament revelation came in letters.

Which brings us to 1 Corinthians.

Traveling through Acts, we last left Paul in Ephesus. While there (53-55 A.D.), he was prompted to write to the Corinthian church he’d left in 51 or 52 A.D. That letter is lost to us. We know of it because Paul’s referred to it in 1 Corinthians 5:9—” I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people . . . ” (For more information about Corinth, see https://theoldpreacher.com/welcome-to-corinth/.)

Some time later, three men arrived in Ephesus with a letter from the Corinthians (“I rejoice at the coming of Stephanas and Fortunatus and Achaicus . . . “—1 Corinthians 16:17). Dr. Gordon Fee comments: “Given the combative nature of so much of [Paul’s response to that letter in 1 Corinthians] it seems highly likely that in their letter they [took] considerable exception to several of his positions/prohibitions [in the “lost” letter]” (The First Epistle to the Corinthians, p. 7).

Not sitting on the edge of your seat wondering what happens next? Why am I risking yawns with this nail-biting information? To point out the remarkable way God revealed himself. In a letter about church conflict, sexual immorality, marriage, idolatry, the Lord’s Supper, spiritual gifts and resurrection! With no thunder and lightning, no earth quaking, no roped-off mountain. (Like the Law-giving revelation at Mount Sinai.) Just a letter. A letter to resolve problems.

And, let’s not sugar-coat it: this was a church with problems. In his little book, The Corinthian Correspondence, Russell P. Spittler, asks us to . . .

“Imagine a church like this one:

Members sue each other before civil courts. Others habitually attend social banquets honoring strange gods, mere idols. One brother lives in open immorality—and the church tolerates it. Others think it would be better for Christian couples to separate so they could be more ‘holy’.

Their worship services are shocking, anything but edifying. Speakers in tongues know no restraints. People come drunk to the Lord’s Supper, where they shy off into exclusive groups—each bragging about its favorite preacher. Visitors get the impression they are mad. Some doubt the Resurrection. And many have reneged on their financial pledges.”

Why so many problems? A brief look at Corinth city history will provide one answer . . .

When it was a Greek city-state, Corinth had been destroyed by Rome (146 B.C.) In 44 B.C. Julius Caesar refounded it as a Roman colony and populated it with freedmen. (Freedmen were slaves who’d found a legal way to be liberated.) Regarding populating Corinth with freedmen, Fee observes: “a convenient way for Rome to rid itself of trouble” (p. 2). (Freedmen often fueled moral corruption. In fact, Rome freed so many slaves some claim it led to Rome’s downfall.)

Corinth’s location was ideal for commerce. Fee: “Since money attracts people like dead meat attracts flies, prosperity returned to the city almost immediately. Corinth quickly experienced a great influx of people from both West and East, along with all the gains and ills of such growth . . . vice and religion flourished side by side . . . Sexual sin [was] of the same kind that one would expect in any seaport where money flowed freely and women and men were available . . . All the evidence together suggests that Paul’s Corinth was at once the New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas of the ancient world” (p. 2,3).

Not surprisingly, then, the Corinthian church endured more than its share of troubles. What is surprising is the Holy Spirit directing Paul to preach the gospel in such a sin-hardened city. (We usually plant a church in a comfortable, growing, middle-class suburb.) And it’s remarkable that God chose to reveal himself in a letter written to the saved-from-sin of that city.

Why in an ordinary letter? The answer, I think, lies here . . .

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:26-31).

The people God chose to save in Corinth couldn’t boast they were picked for their wisdom or power or noble birth. The glory of salvation belonged to God alone.

In the same way, God chose to reveal himself through an ordinary (though Spirit-inspired) letter. God humbles himself to make himself known to us through ways open to the lowest–and the most ordinary–of us.

Here on my desk lies my Bible, looking like any other book. Yet God has chosen to reveal himself through it. An ordinary means to an ordinary person. God is in those pages. Just as God was (and is) in the letter Paul wrote to the Corinthians.

And here is part of God’s message . . .

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).

He is God in an “ordinary” letter with extraordinary good news to ordinary sinners like us!

Psalm 2 Reflections: Why Do the Nations Rebel?

November 20, 2016 / Allan Babcock

This psalm shocks. Not if we skim it, but if we ponder it. .

First, the psalmist claims the world’s nations are rebelling against the Lord’s chosen ruler.

Why do the nations plan rebellion? Why do people make their useless plots? Their kings revolt, their rulers plot together against the Lord and against the king he chose. “Let us free ourselves from their rule,” they say; “let us throw off their control” (Psalm 2:1-3, GNT).

Paranoid psalmist seeing Israel’s enemies revolting against God’s chosen king? We might presume so, except that author Luke cites the plot to crucify Jesus as the fulfillment of this psalm. In other words, it’s ultimately about the world’s rebellion against the Lord Jesus . . .

As soon as Peter and John were set free, they returned to their group and told them what the chief priests and the elders had said. When the believers heard it, they all joined together in prayer to God: “Master and Creator of heaven, earth, and sea, and all that is in them! By means of the Holy Spirit you spoke through our ancestor David, your servant, when he said, ‘Why were the Gentiles furious; why did people make their useless plots? The kings of the earth prepared themselves, and the rulers met together against the Lord and his Messiah.’ For indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together in this city with the Gentiles and the people of Israel against Jesus, your holy Servant, whom you made Messiah. They gathered to do everything that you by your power and will had already decided would happen” (Acts 4:23-28, GNT).

Represented by Herod and Pontius Pilate and the Gentiles and Israel’s people, the nations gather in rebellion against the Lord and his chosen ruler. God has come in human flesh and blood and the nations reject and execute him. Furthermore, the powers that be forbid his followers to even speak in his name.

Second, the psalmist declares rebellion is futile. So much so that the Lord mocks their feeble schemes. Hard to imagine the Lord mocking anyone, isn’t it! No tougher a stretch for some, though, to imagine God angrily terrifying anybody with his fury . . .

“From his throne in heaven the Lord laughs and mocks their feeble plans. Then he warns them in anger and terrifies them with his fury. ‘On Zion, my sacred hill,’ he says, ‘I have installed my king'”(Psalm 2:4-6, GNT).

The nations’ plots are “useless”. Their plans are “feeble”. Set aside for a moment that these plots and plans are against the Lord and his chosen ruler. See them simply as the plans for world leaders to govern. All government isn’t bad. In fact, the apostle Paul urges Christians to obey the state authorities because God established them (Romans 13:1). But look at world conditions. Threatened by nuclear powers. Refugees fleeing the burning Middle East. Terrorists killing innocents and hacking into critical computers. Corruption common wherever you look. Governments holding it all together with duct tape. Ordinary people cry out for “good” government. Might the world’s be “bad” because they’ve “killed” the Lord’s chosen leader?

Third, the psalmist warns earth’s rulers to bow down and serve the Lord or else his anger will flare and kill them . . .

“‘I will announce,’ says the king, ‘what the Lord has declared.’ He said to me: ‘You are my son; today I have become your father. Ask, and I will give you all the nations; the whole earth will be yours. You will break them with an iron rod; you will shatter them in pieces like a clay pot.’ Now listen to this warning, you kings; learn this lesson, you rulers of the world: Serve the Lord with fear; tremble and bow down to him; or else his anger will be quickly aroused, and you will suddenly die. Happy are all who go to him for protection” (Psalm 2:7-12, GNT).

Jesus is the Lord’s son. He’s the king who receives all the nations whose military force he shatters like a clay pot. Therefore, the psalmist warns the nations’ “kings” to fearfully, humbly serve the Lord, lest his anger flare and kill them.

Sounds more like radical Islam than Judaism/Christianity, doesn’t it! To a world that views God as overseer and therapeutic helper, this God’s a stranger. A warrior. A world government leader. A potential killer.

Let’s make no mistake. When Egypt and Babylon and Assyria marshaled armies against Old Testament Israel, they fought the Lord’s chosen ruler. When Herod and Pontius Pilate and the Gentiles and Israel sentenced Jesus to death, they rebelled against the king the Lord had chosen to one day rule the world.

In Psalm 2 the psalmist doesn’t pray about personal salvation; he prays about world politics. And he warns the world’s rulers now to serve the Lord. For the whole earth will be his.

“Lord Jesus, your Father will give you all the nations. The whole earth will be yours. You will shatter their rebellion like a clay pot. Herein lies the ultimate failure of human government. Not faulty policies, but misplaced faith–faith in false religions, faith in godless worldviews, faith in economic programs and military might.

“Lord, mercifully gather world leaders to the foot of your cross. Bring them to saving faith and then to righteous rule. And may that repentance begin with ordinary people like us. May we serve you. With reverence. May we bow down to you. And show by our lives that our citizenship is in heaven, that we belong to the kingdom not of this world. May we go to you for protection we need. And find our joy in living under your rule.”

The End of White Christian America (Finale)

November 19, 2016 / Allan Babcock

What can we take away from our brief overview of The End of White Christian America?

A Changing America.

For me, the biggest take-away is this: we live in a changing country. Here, from the book’s dust cover, let’s read again the change author Robert P. Jones writes about.

“For most of the country’s history, White Christian America—the cultural and political edifice built primarily by white Protestant Christians—set the tone for our national policy and shaped American ideals. But in recent decades new immigration patterns, changing birth rates, and religious disaffiliation have transformed the United States. The year 1993 was the last in which white Protestants constituted a majority of the population. Today, even when Catholics are included, white Christians make up less than half of the country.”

White Protestant Christians have pretty much from the beginning “set the tone for our national policy and shaped American ideals.” Now the U.S. has been transformed by immigration, lowered white birth rates and the exodus of young adults from the church. For the last thirteen years white Christians have been less than half of our population. Projections promise more of the same tomorrow.

” . . . Jones shows how today’s most heated controversies—the strident rise of a white politics of nostalgia following the election of the nation’s first black president; the apocalyptic tone of arguments over same-sex marriage and religious liberty; the stark disagreements between white and black Americans over the fairness of the justice system—can be fully understood only in the context of the anxieties that white Christians feel as the racial, religious, and cultural landscape has changed around them.”

Jones implies that we “white Christians” are huddling together, trembling as we watch our familiar world crumble around us, leaving ever-shrinking, safe ground on which to stand. We may not understand these changes. We may wish for the Sheriff Andy in Mayberry days. We may be unsure of our next step. But we’re not biting our nails afraid of apocalyptic disasters. Though we are anxious about America’s future . . .

“Today, although they still retain considerable power in the South and within the Republican Party, white Christians lack their former political and social clout . . . ”

Hear the sigh of relief from many of us after Trump’s election victory? Maybe God gave us a reprieve! Perhaps Ozzie and Harriet live for a little while yet! The fact that many don’t know who Ozzie and Harriet were shows how far we’ve come. A reprieve–maybe. But “white Christians lack their former political and social clout.” And, if projections are correct (polls couldn’t be wrong, right?), there’s no going back. The tide of transformation is relentless.

Misplaced Reliance on Government.

Majority or minority, we’re right to use our religious freedom for life and against abortion, for the sanctity of man-woman marriage and against same-sex marriage, for Christians to practice the faith in the market place and against the progressive view that sexual “freedom” trumps religious freedom. But we can’t rely on the government to be salt and light.

Who knows what a Trump presidency will bring? We can hope for conservative constitutionalist nominations to the Supreme Court. For an improved economy that will lift people out of poverty and even quench fiery race relations. For a world somewhat safer from terrorism. But faith in human government (even headed by not-a-politician) will be misplaced and futile.

Rather than breathing that relief-sigh, expecting that a new political administration will “make America great again”, The End of White Christian America should not only inform us of being a country in flux. It should also move us (however many of us there are!) to live radically as devoted followers of the Lord Jesus Christ.

A Colony of Heaven.

Stanley Hauerwas, is a United Methodist theologian and ethicist, currently the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School in Durham, NC. In The End of White Christian America, author Jones cites Hauerwas’ call for the church to be “‘a colony of heaven’ comprised of Christians who are ‘resident aliens’ in a strange land.” Hauerwas (in his book, Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony) “emphasized Christianity’s function as an institution separate from politics and worldly affair, not an insider in the halls of power.

In Hauerwas’ vision, the demise of the ‘Christian century’ aspiration was actually an opportunity for a new, truer Christian faithfulness: ‘The gradual decline of the notion that the church needs some sort of surrounding “Christian” culture to prop it up and molds its young is not a death to lament. It is an opportunity to celebrate” (p. 213, 214).

Here are several additional quotes from Hauerwas’ book. They form a fitting way for our “take-aways” from The End of White Christian America—a launching pad to thrust us into the new era of this country as the church of Jesus Christ.

“The loss of Christendom gives us a joyous opportunity to reclaim the freedom to proclaim the gospel in a way in which we cannot when the main social task of the church is to serve as one among many helpful props for the state.”

“We believe that many Christians do not fully appreciate the odd way in which the church, when it is most faithful, goes about its business. We want to claim the church’s “oddness” as essential to its faithfulness . . .

“The church is not to be judged by how useful we are as a ‘supportive institution’ and our clergy as members of a ‘helping profession’. The church has its own reason for being, hid within its own mandate and not found in the world. We are not chartered by the Emperor.”

“The cross is not a sign of the church’s quiet, suffering submission to the powers-that-be, but rather the church’s revolutionary participation in the victory of Christ over those powers. The cross is not a symbol for general human suffering and oppression. Rather, the cross is a sign of what happens when one takes God’s account of reality more seriously than Caesar’s. The cross stands as God’s (and our) eternal no to the powers of death, as well as God’s eternal yes to humanity, God’s remarkable determination not to leave us to our own devices.”

“We would like a church that again asserts that God, not nations, rules the world, that the boundaries of God’s kingdom transcend those of Caesar, and that the main political task of the church is the formation of people who see clearly the cost of discipleship and are willing to pay the price.”

The End of White Christian America (Part Five)

November 17, 2016 / Allan Babcock

“Why can’t White Christian America understand how African Americans feel about the black men who have died at the hands of white police officers?” So wonders author Robert P. Jones (p. 155).

Racial Perception Gap.

Shortly after the Baltimore riots in April 2015 a Public Religion and Research Institute (PRRI) found that 74% of black Americans thought “the recent killings of African American men by police in Ferguson . . . New York City and Baltimore . . . were part of a broader pattern of how police treat African Americans” (p. 153). Many white Americans see these killings as “isolated incidents”.

The End of White Christian America

https://www.amazon.com/End-White-Christian-America/dp/1501122290/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1479382454&sr=1-1&keywords=the+end+of+white+christian+america

America’s Still-Segregated Modern Life.

Jones sees “America’s still-segregated modern life” marked by geographic segregation, an overwhelming majority of white Americans not having a close relationship with a non-white, and no institutions to resolve “systemic social segregation”.

For example, in 1911 Baltimore’s mayor signed an ordinance designed to “promote the general welfare of the city by assigning separate blocks for the city’s black and white residents”. Such segregation spread and persisted over the years through housing codes and and property owners’ associations that blocked blacks from moving into white neighborhoods. It’s resulted black Americans having only 72% of the well-being of white Americans—“as measured across . . . economic well-being, health, education, social judgment and civil engagement” (p. 157).

Second example. A 2013 PRRI survey found that “on average, the core social networks of white Americans are . . . 91% white and only 1% black” (p. 161).

Third example. Public schools are the primary institution to bridge this racial divide. Yet “the average white student today attends a school that is 73% white” (p. 162).

What about the church? Jones argues that, while a small number have successfully integrated, “the church is still the most segregated major institution in America”, as Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. charged in 1963.

The Role of White Christian America.

Jones asserts, “No segment of White Christian America has been more complicit in the nation’s . . . racial history than white evangelical Protestants” (p. 167). He indicts Southern Baptist churches as the guiltiest, but notes that recently SBC churches are leading the way regarding integration (p. 174).

Can the church “desegregate”? To “reinforce the current racial isolation” would “ensure White Christian America’s declining relevance”, according to Jones. Better, as some churches are doing (Middle Collegiate Church, New York City and Oakhurst Baptist, Atlanta), to “pioneer a new kind of Christian community that transcends the color line” (p. 179-188).

On her “Huffington Post” blog, Reverend Jacqui Lewis described a transcending-the-color-line service at Middle Church: “A tall gorgeous Black gay man from our congregation led with One day, when the Glory comes, it will be ours, it will be ours, while his petite white husband played the Hammond organ. The choir–directed by a Mexican American man, accompanied by a lesbian Black woman–filled with the voices of Chinese, Japanese, White, Black, Puerto Rican, married, and single folk who span generations rapped like Common–in unison! They wept, they stomped their feet as though they were stomping out injustice. Our congregation was on fire with deep feelings of both sorrow and hope.”

The church we planted in North Jersey in 1973 grew to be about 25% non-white. Not by our planning. It just happened. We all treated non-whites the same as whites. We aimed at loving each other as Jesus loved us (John 13:34). We realized Christ’s cross made two (or more) races one . . .

“But now, in union with Christ Jesus you, who used to be far away, have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For Christ himself has brought us peace by making Jews and Gentiles one people. With his own body he broke down the wall that separated them and kept them enemies. He abolished the Jewish Law with its commandments and rules, in order to create out of the two races one new people in union with himself, in this way making peace. By his death on the cross Christ destroyed their enmity; by means of the cross he united both races into one body and brought them back to God” (Ephesians 2:13-16, GNT).

So we tasted the adventure of bridging the racial divide. But we couldn’t foster unity at the expense of biblical morality. Nor can we now. The Bible condemns homosexual practice.

( “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God”–1 Corinthians 6:9,10, ESV). Unity must be in Christ. A practicing “gay man” and “his husband” and “a lesbian woman” cannot have unity in Christ.

I add a third reason: the church has the Holy Spirit’s power to obediently live out the unity we have in Christ. We have no excuse for racism. For in the end Jesus will be praised for, by his blood, ransoming people for God “from every tribe and language and people and nation,”and making them “a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth” (Revelation 5:9,10, ESV).

Given the racial divide in America and the church’s lingering segregation, we can’t simply wait for more integrated churches to “just happen”. Is it time to prayerfully consider merging-as-equals with a mostly-black church? Might the Lord lead some of us in that direction? I don’t know. And since I’m retired due to disability, I don’t have to wrestle with that question! But it may be time for us to take deliberate steps to live out the unity we have in Christ.

The subject demands far more thought than I can give to it here. Suffice it to generally agree with Jones” conclusion . . .

“The road under White Christian America’s descendants’ feet must lead first through the uncharted terrain of remembering, repentance, and repair. Given White Christian America’s long history of complicity in slavery, segregation, and racism, we are at the beginning, not the end, of the journey across the racial divide” (p. 195).

The End of White Christian America (Part Four)

November 15, 2016 / Allan Babcock

June 26, 2015. The U.S. Supreme Court declared all bans on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. It symbolized more than any other culture-change White Christian America’s loss of power.

“Writing for the 5-4 majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy declared that ‘the right to marry is a fundamental right inherent in the liberty of the person, and under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment couples of the same-sex cannot be deprived of that right and that liberty.’ But marriage is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. As the Chief Justice asserted in his dissent, the majority opinion did not really make any serious constitutional argument at all. It was, as the Chief Justice insisted, an argument based in philosophy rather than in law . . .

“Justice Antonin Scalia offered a stinging rebuke to the majority. ‘This is a naked judicial claim to legislative–indeed super-legislative–power; a claim fundamentally at odds with our system of government,’ he stated. Justice Scalia then offered these stunning words of judgment: ‘A system of government that makes the people subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy'” (http://www.albertmohler.com/2015/06/27/everything-has-changed-and-nothing-has-changed-the-supreme-court-and-same-sex-marriage/).

Discrimination.

Pro-same-sex-marriage folks have charged “discrimination.” Why should heterosexuals legally marry, but not homosexuals? They believe homosexual practice (including same-sex marriage) is “morally right”. Disallowed marriage is discrimination.

So was President Eisenhower’s executive order that anyone engaged in “sexual perversion” (homosexual practice) could not hold a job in the federal government. Through the 1950s and 60s the FBI “hunted down” and fired thousands of gay and lesbian federal employees.

In the 1970s “gay rights activists” began “an ambitious crusade: passing laws banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in employment and housing” (The End of White Christian America”, p. 116). They’ve succeeded.

Public Opinion.

Public opinion has changed remarkably. In 1988 the “General Social Survey” found only 11% of Americans supported same-sex marriage. By 2003 45% of young adults (ages 18-29) favored it, while only 13% of seniors (age 65+) did. By 2014 only seven states had a majority of residents who opposed it. And only four major religious groups (white evangelical Protestants–66%, Mormons–68%, Hispanic Protestants–58%, and African-American Protestants–54%) oppose it today.

Author Robert P. Jones predicts, “[even among these groups] generational differences make it clear that opposition to gay rights will ultimately lose its power as the culture war weapon of choice” (p. 129). Why? Because younger Americans “abandon traditional religious institutions” that mark homosexual practice as “sinful, immoral or perverse” (p. 131). The public increasingly supports same-sex marriage.

Reevaluate?

Jones opines: “The generational divides over LGBT rights are momentous for the evangelical branch of White Christian America and for conservative religious groups generally . . . Conservative religious groups’ very future hinges on how willing they are to navigate from the margins toward the new mainstream . . . Refusing to reevaluate . . . may relegate conservative religious groups to cultural irrelevancy and continued decline, as more and more young people leave church behind” (p. 133).

Can we–should we–“reevaluate”?

Russel Moore, head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission in 2013 said, “The Sexual Revolution isn’t content to move forward into bedrooms and dinner tables. The Sexual Revolution wants to silence dissent. The religious liberty concerns we are grappling with already will only accelerate . . . If we have to choose between Jesus and Millennials (who favor same-sex marriage), we choose Jesus” (p. 142).

Confession: some Christians have treated same-sex marriage proponents unChristianly. We must repent and reevaluate attitudes and actions. We must learn to love the sinner. We must be graced by God to “speak the truth in love.”

Homosexual practice is not an especially egregious sin. It’s one among many. “Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God”–1 Corinthians 6:9b,10, ESV).

But it is sin. That we can’t reevaluate. No matter public opinion. No matter our minority status.

The Future.

The big burden of these end-of-white-Christian-America blogs is knowledge and preparation. To know the cultural change in which we live. And to prepare for living in it as Jesus-followers.

In a later book (Onward: Engaging the Culture without Losing the Gospel) Russell Moore writes: “Above all we must prepare people for what the future holds, when Christian beliefs about marriage and sexuality aren’t part of the cultural consensus but are seen to be strange and freakish and even subversive . . . for a world that views evangelical Protestants and traditional Roman Catholics and Orthodox Jews and others as bigots or freaks” (quoted in The End of White Christian America, p. 143).

Are we ready for that? Are our young adults? Are our children and grandchildren?

Not Dead Yet.

This blog (link below) may soften my blog’s blow a bit. Reading it is worth the risk.

http://religionnews.com/2016/11/14/the-last-hurrah-for-white-christian-america/

Electoral What?

November 15, 2016 / Allan Babcock

So what’s this “electoral college” thing?

I’m weary of election news, but here I am writing about it again. This, though, is purely informational. The two links below will help us understand the electoral college. If it’s something that doesn’t interest you, trash it. (This doesn’t count toward my blog-for-the-day.)

The first, by Hillsdale College President Larry Arn, is quite readable. The second is more like a text book. If you go for only one, I’d pick the first. Hope the information helps. No test.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-electoral-college-is-anything-but-outdated-1479168669?tesla=y

https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/about.html

Psalm Reflections: Forever Happy

November 14, 2016 / Allan Babcock

Read Psalm 1 today. Can’t resist some simple reflections. Here’s the psalm in the Good News Translation (change from the familiar) . . .

Happy are those who reject the advice of evil people, who do not follow the example of sinners or join those who have no use for God (1:1).

The GNT substitutes “Happy” for the typical “Blessed”. Both somewhat miss the mark. The meaning is more like “happy because one is favored by God”.

The psalmist makes a blatant judgment. We would think it politically incorrect. Some people are evil. Not just ISIS. Not just mass murderers. Evil people are those whom God judges “sinners”, those who fall short of what he calls “right”. Because the Bible claims “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), all are sinners apart from God’s saving grace in Jesus Christ.

Of course, in the ongoing process of God’s salvation history, the psalmist would identify sinners as those who didn’t believe in God as revealed to Israel and who didn’t evidence that faith by living according to his laws.

The psalmist identifies “evil people” another way also: “those who have no use for God”. That’s the GNT’s take on “sit in the seat of scoffers”. A good interpretation, though not literal translation.

We’d be dangerously mistaken to assume advice from “evil people” comes only one-on-one. (I’ll be happy if I don’t take my evil neighbor’s counsel.) Advice comes much more—and subtly so—through the omnipresent media. Everything from a sit com to an Internet blog offers counsel, almost all of it “evil”. Listen with discernment and reject the godless!

Instead, they find joy in obeying the Law of the Lord, and they study it day and night (1:2).

We Christians speak much of faith, little of obedience. Afraid of falling into salvation-by-works, we ignore obedience as the evidence of faith. And we overlook the fact that even the Old Testament psalmist was saved by faith, his obedience between faith’s outworking.

It seems incongruous to us that the source of joy is obeying the Lord’s Law (Be free! Break the rules!) and so we’re driven to “study” the Lord’s Law “day and night”. Who equates joy with obeying and studying laws? Apparently, the Lord does! If I’m to have joy, I must fill my mind with the Lord’s Law(s) and obey that Law in my living. Note: the psalmist doesn’t promise obedience brings salvation; rather that obedience brings joy.

They are like trees that grow beside a stream, that bear fruit at the right time, and whose leaves do not dry up. They succeed in everything they do (1:3).

The psalmist’s no dreamer. Life, he knows, has its “dry” seasons. But even then, those who obey the Lord’s Law prosper. Like “trees that grow beside a stream” bearing fruit, not drying up, they “succeed in everything they do”.

Skeptics here think “pollyanna” (blindly optimistic) or “the guy doesn’t live in the real world”. Without a doubt, the psalmist knew about suffering. Hard times God’s people endured were a reality to him. So “success” doesn’t mean “a pain-free, opulent lifestyle”. It has a decidedly eternal perspective.

But evil people are not like this at all; they are like straw that the wind blows away (1:4).

“Evil”people don’t prosper. Really? What about the politicians (to cite just one example) who used their position to enrich themselves? To cite another, what about the billionaires who get richer by bending/breaking laws because they’re billionaires?

” . . . they are like straw that the wind blows away.” Here’s a hint of the eternal perspective. The old farmer takes his wheat to the threshing floor. Throws a pile into the air. The heavy grain falls to the floor. The wind blows the lighter “straw” away. So, says, “evil people” are like that.

Sinners will be condemned by God and kept apart from God’s own people (1:5).

Sounds fairy-tale-ish. Can’t even imagine it. Is God going to direct every human who ever lived into one interminably long line, then call each one by one to appear before him while he waves his long-robed arms around and interrogates their life’s habits? Will he then send “the guilty” to their doom? Get real. Couldn’t happen. Well, maybe not that way. But, if we accept the Bible as God’s word, we can’t write off Judgment Day because we can’t fit it into our little minds.

The righteous are guided and protected by the Lord, but the evil are on the way to their doom (1:6).

And so, the “righteous” enjoy the Lord’s guidance and protection. Not from sore throats or cancer or physical death, but from being thrown away like straw on Judgment Day. They will be eternally guided and protected.

On the other hand, “the evil are on the way to their doom”.

Thus the psalmist divides humanity in two. Different worldviews. Different lifestyles. Different directions. Different destinies.

The lesson is obvious: Don’t buy into the counsel of the world. Study and obey the Lord’s Law. But only if we want to be happy forever.

Psalm Reflections: Happy Forever

November 14, 2016 / Allan Babcock

I read Psalm 1 today. Can’t resist writing simple reflections on it. Here it is in the Good News Translation (a change from the familiar . . . )

Happy are those who reject the advice of evil people, who do not follow the example of sinners or join those who have no use for God (1:1).

The GNT replaces the typical “Blessed” with “Happy”. Both fall a bit short of the mark, the Hebrew meaning something like “happy because one is favored by God”. Who are these “happy” ones? ” . . . those who reject the advice of evil people, who do not follow the example of sinners or join those who have no use for God.”

The psalmist makes a blatant judgment. We would think it politically incorrect. Not the psalmist. Some people are evil. Not just ISIS. Not just mass murderers. Evil people are those who God judges “sinners”, those who fall short of what he calls “right”. Because the Bible claims “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), all are sinners apart from God’s saving grace in Jesus Christ.

Instead, they find joy in obeying the Law of the Lord, and they study it day and night (1:2).

They are like trees that grow beside a stream, that bear fruit at the right time, and whose leaves do not dry up. They succeed in everything they do (1:3).

But evil people are not like this at all; they are like straw that the wind blows away (1:4).“Evil” people don’t prosper. Really? What about the politicians (to cite just one example) who used their position to enrich themselves? To cite another, what about the billionaires who get richer by bending/breaking laws because they’re billionaires?

Sinners will be condemned by God and kept apart from God’s own people (1:5).

Sinners (evil people who have no use for God, who flaunt his Law) “will be condemned by God . . . ” On the future Judgment Day, the “straw” will be “blown away” and “kept apart from God’s people”, who have trusted him, rejected evil counsel, and devoted themselves to live by the Lord’s Law.

The righteous are guided and protected by the Lord, but the evil are on the way to their doom (1:6).

On the other hand, “the evil are on the way to their doom”.

Thus the psalmist divides humanity in two. Different worldviews. Different lifestyles. Different directions. Different destinies.

The lesson is obvious: Don’t buy into the counsel of the world. Study and obey the Lord’s Law. But only if we want to be happy forever.

The End of White Christian America (Part Three)

November 13, 2016 / Allan Babcock

In a 2014 Super Bowl ad “the camera panned over Americans clad in everything from cowboy hats to yarmulkes to hijabs—including an interracial gay couple at a roller rink with their daughter—over a soundtrack of ‘America the Beautiful’ sung in seven different languages” (The End of White Christian America, p.46). Not your familiar Coke commercial. Nor are these statistics familiar.

Statistics.

The proportion of white Christians has fallen to 47%. Americans not affiliated with any religious group has grown to 22%. ” . . . young adults (ages 18-29) are less than half as likely to be white Christians as seniors (age 65 and older).” Demographic changes, such as immigration and birth rates, are contributing to the declining proportion of white Christians. But “the other major force [is} young adults’ (ages 18-29) rejection of organized religion.”

Author of this book, Robert P. Jones, founding CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, comments: “Falling numbers and the marginalization of a once dominant racial and religious identity . . . threatens white Christians’ understanding of America itself.”

I’m writing, not because this shift threatens us, but because it’s important that we understand the America in which we follow and bear witness of Jesus. When I was a kid . . . Well, I’m no longer a kid and the country’s not like it was then, and probably never will be.

Another statistic. In 1972 white Protestants’ median age was 46. Now it’s 53. (Median age of all Americans is 46.) Mainline and evangelical Protestants are aging and, says Jones, “quickly losing ground as a proportion of the population” (p. 56).

When I was a kid . . . Let’s try that again. I assumed that my Protestant faith was virtually universal (except for Catholics and Jews). Now, Jones observes, “the incursion of the Internet and national cable news has made it impossible for White Christian America’s contemporary descendants (this generation) to assume that [Protestant faith is universal] . . . ” In other words, our children see their faith as one among many faiths in the world, and even among many in the country. They know, just by absorbing America as it is today, that their belief-system isn’t prevailing and may be the minority.

It’s becoming obvious to adults, as Jones concludes, that White Christian Americans “no longer have the numbers or the cultural authority to dominate American public life” (p. 77).

Racism.

Jones refers to Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2008 as “the most visible symbolic challenge to White Christian America’s hold on the country” (p. 80). He goes so far as to claim that “Obama’s election had challenged many whites cultural assumption—that the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) was the only authentic model of citizenship” (p. 82).

I object to that vague (“many whites cultural assumption”) racist charge! As far as I can tell, many whites did not assume WASP was “the only authentic model of citizenship”! And I think the more we make that claim, the more we fuel the racism that divides us. This, too, marks us as a changing country: opportunities for African-Americans have never been greater, but racism remains—and some who rightly condemn it so vociferously inadvertently further it.

Politics.

White Christian America would seem (at least in Jones’ view) to have lost its political clout. And yet, Johnnie Moore, a spokesman for “My Faith Votes”, said, “The sweeping support evangelicals gave Donald Trump on Election Day was stoked by their fear that Christianity is being killed off” (http://www.newsmax.com/Newsmax-Tv/johnnie-moore-evangelical-panic-christianity/2016/11/11/id/758477/?ns_mail_uid=95913738&ns_mail_job=1695851_1112201 In other words, our clout is being killed, but ain’t dead yet.

If White Christian America is losing political clout (I doubt we fear Christianity is being killed off!), that’s bad news for the Republican party. (More evangelicals vote Republican because that party’s conservative principles harmonize more with a biblical worldview.) So Jones, as many others, urges Republicans to respond by “rebranding their conservatism to appeal to women, ethnic minorities, and young people.”

The same advice, by the way, has been urged upon the church. If we’re to reach young adults we have to rethink the role of women in the church, welcome the LGBT community, perform same-sex marriages, change our church-building rest rooms, etc. In other words, we have to give “progressive” people what they want regardless of the Bible’s moral authority. So goes the argument.

If the changes I’ve noted here seem a bit disorienting, that’s because they are. America’s no longer the country it once was. If it was “White Christian”, it is no longer. Gone are the days when society at least mildly reinforces basic tenets of the faith. Increasingly now it barely tolerates them. And when it comes to favored progressive positions (abortion, LGBT demands, for example), it loudly and “legally” opposes them.

Counter: A Better Country.

But note this: the Lord hasn’t lost. Nor has his church. However, it is time for us to stop feeling shocked at how immorality (by biblical standards) is winning approval in the name of “rights”. It’s also time for us to stop assuming the “right” people in political office will make everything okay again.

Rather it’s time for us Jesus followers to get on a war footing. Not to brandish this world’s weapons, but the weapons of righteousness our Lord gives us. And thereby show a declining country there’s a better one . . .

“They did not receive the things God had promised, but from a long way off they saw them and welcomed them, and admitted openly that they were foreigners and refugees on earth. Those who say such things make it clear that they are looking for a country of their own. They did not keep thinking about the country they had left; if they had, they would have had the chance to return. Instead, it was a better country they longed for, the heavenly country. And so God is not ashamed for them to call him their God, because he has prepared a city for them” (Hebrews 11:13b-16, GNT).