Things I’m glad my dad didn’t teach me

Posted on June 20, 2015 by salooper57

After reading an article by Peter Scholl, a forty-something married man with kids, living in Australia, I find myself grateful for the things my dad didn’t teach me. Scholl reflects on what contemporary culture teaches boys and men about their identity, especially in the media.

Scholl writes that when he watches sports on TV, he is confused by how the advertisers and commentators think of guys like him. He says they imagine that he and men like him all wish they were 19 again, and think “the key elements of a happy life are (in no particular order) bacon, having fun with your mates, and beer.”

Further, they portray husbands as “hopeless” men who “can’t be trusted to do the grocery shopping, buy clothes for the kids, or articulately express an opinion when it comes to colour, style or appearance.” And “as a father, you are a joke. Your kids don’t take you seriously.”

He goes on to say that the media represents wives as killjoys and faithfulness in marriage as a sign of weakness or cowardice. The only happy place for a man to be is in a bar, surrounded by friends and, no doubt, 19-year-old girls.

Now it’s true my dad couldn’t be trusted to do the grocery shopping. When my mother was recuperating after surgery, he did the shopping, and I went with him. He bought junk food, any sale item that caught his eye, and the worst tasting off-brand foods ever produced.

And he was, admittedly, a terrible cook. When he got done preparing a steak, it should have been licensed as a deadly weapon. When he tried to bake a cake for my mother’s birthday and the recipe instructed him to “fold in an egg” he was completely bewildered. The only thing my dad could find in the kitchen was his place at the table. He could not have tracked down the baking soda, had his life depended on it.

Yet he didn’t teach my brother and me that dads are a joke. We knew he meant what he said. We saw him break up a violent fight between two men who were trying to kill each other. On another occasion, he apprehended a robbery suspect as he was breaking into the store across the street, and held him until the police arrived. He taught us that dads are courageous.

I’m also grateful my dad didn’t teach us that happiness comes from flirting with 19-year-old girls. I never saw his eye wander and never heard him say anything suggestive about a woman. He remained faithful to my mother until his death in 1996.

It’s true that my dad could have taught my brother and me that the only happy place for a man was in a bar – he drank a lot when we were young. In fact, his drinking caused problems, and brought the family to a crisis. That’s when he chose to quit drinking, to distance himself from some of his friends, and to concentrate on his family. In so doing, he taught us that a dad can do things he doesn’t want to do, but needs to do, for the sake of his family.

I’m glad my dad did not teach me to swear. Looking back on it now, I’m really surprised that he didn’t. He was as tough a guy as you’d ever want to know: a two-fisted Marine, who never backed down from a fight. When I was younger (and he was still drinking), he often lost his temper. Most of the men that hung around with my dad could swear a blue streak. But I never heard him use profanity – not even once.

I’m especially grateful my dad didn’t teach me that believing in God is for weaklings. When my brother was dying of cancer, my two-fisted, never-turn-away-from-a-fight father turned to God for help. His first years as a Christian were sometimes rocky – he brought his anger and pride with him into his new relationship with God – but he stuck it out.

By his example he taught me that a man really can change. He became increasingly attentive and loving to my mother. His confidence in God increased. His willingness to be known as a Christian grew. He became a kinder and gentler man. I’m grateful for the things my dad didn’t teach me, but I’m even more grateful that he taught me this.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 6/20/2015

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Hit by a pornographic tsunami

Posted on June 13, 2015 by salooper57

Recent survey data reveals that 68 percent of men who describe themselves as Christians – so approximately seven out of every ten Christian men in America – look at pornography. That is true even though 65 percent of all American men – Christian or not – say that viewing porn is morally wrong.

But that conviction is changing. Younger people, in ever greater numbers, are saying that viewing porn is a totally appropriate expression of one’s sexuality. The “clever clogs” (to borrow A. N. Wilson’s term) of social liberalism talk as if viewing pornography is natural and healthy, and assume that anyone who disagrees is a religious prude, hung up on ridiculous and outdated sexual mores.

In surveys taken of teen boys, 35 percent say they have viewed online porn “too many times to count.” More than half of boys and a third of girls have seen their first pornographic images before they turn thirteen. 64 percent of young men and 18 percent of young women say that they view pornography on a weekly basis.

There’s more. 40 to 50 percent of church pastors (depending on the survey) admit to struggling with porn addiction. Our country, our world and even our churches have been hit by a pornographic tsunami, originating in (of all places) the U. S., the supposed bastion of Christian values. (When the late Ayatollah Khomeini called America “the great satan,” he probably didn’t have this in mind, but when you think of how U.S. companies are spewing pornographic images of sexual violence around the globe, it’s bound to give you pause.)

What is so bad about porn? Well, leave aside for the moment – but don’t forget – the fact that pornography is demeaning to women, glorifies sexual aggression, and exploits the people whose images are being sold. Leave aside for the moment the fact that the women used in pornographic images and films are often sexually abused and drug addicted, and that the people who buy porn or visit pornographic websites support the monsters that inflict that abuse. Leaving that aside for the moment, consider what pornography does to the person who views it.

A man who is in the habit of viewing porn is creating neural pathways in his brain that become wider (for lack of a better word) each time he looks. Dr. William Struthers of Wheaton College writes that those neural corridors become the “automatic pathway through which interactions with woman are routed…” The brain on porn becomes more and more sexualized.

Here’s something else: As porn sexualizes people, it also desensitizes them. They feel less – less outrage, less excitement, less everything. In her book Pornified, New York Times editor Pamela Paul says that a person addicted to porn begins to find the real world boring and real people disinteresting.

We live in the wreckage of a twentieth century moral earthquake and the tsunami of porn it’s generating. It is in this context that we must wrestle with a concept that is largely unknown (or, if known, assumed outdated) in society, but is everywhere in the Bible: personal purity.

The biblical concept of purity certainly includes sexual purity, but it is not limited to it. It involves the whole person. Biblical writers repeatedly refers to it as purity of heart. To try to be sexually pure without being pure in heart is like trying to build a house from the roof down. It won’t work, and you’re liable to get crushed trying.

The Christian idea of purity does not primarily refer to sexual contact with another person, but to spiritual contact with a holy God. It calls a person to be changed in his or her thoughts, values and choices. As the heart is purified – that is, as attitudes and actions foreign to God’s character – are filtered out, a person is gradually freed from the domination of selfish desires to live a rich and fulfilled life. Jesus was right: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” But then, as C. S. Lewis once quipped, it’s only the pure in heart that want to.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 6/13/2015

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Why I’m Still an Evangelical

Posted on June 6, 2015 by salooper57

In 1987, the controversial Catholic priest Hans Kung famously published a book titled, “Why I am Still a Christian.” For some reason that book, which I read many years ago, came back to my mind recently, and started me thinking about why I am still an Evangelical Christian.

I first came to faith in God and learned confidence in Jesus in an Evangelical church. Many of the people who have been the most help to me in learning to live an authentic Christian life have been Evangelicals. I pastor an Evangelical church. Why wouldn’t I be an Evangelical?

I can think of reasons. For one, Evangelicals like to put on a show. Literally. Worship in Evangelical churches often deteriorates into an entertainment hour, with people choosing their church by the genre of music that’s used. The unchallenged authority of personal preference in worship, or in any other matter of faith and practice, is a very troubling development.

Something else about Evangelicals I don’t like: we too quickly borrow the latest methods used by secular businesses to achieve our goals. If the medium is the message, as Marshall McLuhan taught us, the Evangelical message is sometimes “We’re the cool kids on the block.”

Then there’s the fact that Evangelicals are eager to get people into heaven but unskilled at helping them live on earth. We tend to focus all our energy in getting people “saved” – helping them make a decision for Christ – but do little to help them remain spiritually solvent thereafter.

I have also seen Evangelicals employ means that are inappropriate to their chosen end. Too often Evangelical preachers manipulate people’s emotions and play on their fears, in an attempt to get them to choose heaven. But when the sermon is over and the emotion fades, the new convert finds he has nothing to stand on and is all too likely to fall.

And then there’s David Brooks stinging assessment of Evangelicals. He says that “Intellectual standards in the evangelical community are not as high as they could be,” and explains “that what drives people away the most [from Evangelicalism] is a mixture of an intellectual inferiority complex with a moral superiority complex.” Ouch!
I don’t deny any of these things, and yet I am still Evangelical. Why?

I am still an Evangelical because Evangelicals are people of the book. A Bible-less Christianity is like a map-less expedition. It can be done, but the explorer will probably not know where he is or where his goal lies. The Bible is our map and the Spirit our compass – a map and compass held in highest regard by Evangelicals. I, like many Evangelicals, have found the Bible to be the single biggest help to me in learning how to live and love as a Christian.

I am still an Evangelical because Evangelicals still call people to decision. The value of making a line-in-the-sand, do-or-die decision is inestimable. Jesus called people to decision. So did the Apostles Peter and Paul, and so do Evangelicals. I have not found that people become Christians by accident. God does not override people’s wills and force them into faith. They need to make a decision, and Evangelicals – more than any other Christians – understand that.

It’s not that decision is missing from mainline Churches and Roman Catholicism, but it is often understated. I have known many people raised in the Church of Rome (and I love them; I married one) who have told me that they did not understand the time of their confirmation to be a time of decision. They just stumbled through it, doing what they were told.

I am also an Evangelical because Evangelicals are some of the most compassionate people in the world. It is ironic. It can seem as if Evangelicals are only interested in getting people into heaven, yet they spend more time and money than anyone in keeping people fed, clothed and cared for on earth.

Those are a few of the reasons why I’m still an Evangelical. But what is more important – more important by far – is that I’m still a Christian, and I’m not ashamed to say so.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 6/6/15

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From what area code does this call originate?

Posted on May 30, 2015 by salooper57

Kym Ackerman left her dental appointment in Flagstaff, Arizona with a numinous feeling of wonder. On an X-ray of her left-side molars, she had just seen the image of Jesus. According to The Huffington Post, Ackerman explained that her mother died when she was only 17, but seeing “Jesus” in her tooth made her feel that she has been protected by a guardian angel.

The Huffington Post also reported that a couple felt the presence of God when they saw an image of Jesus on their Walmart shopping receipt. The Daily Mirror reported that a woman in Birmingham, England believes that Jesus revealed his presence to her through an image on her bathroom floor. (Full disclosure: she and her family have also met ghosts in their house.)

When the cult leader Jeffrey Don Lundgren executed an entire family in Kirtland, Ohio, he said that God had ordered him to do it. A mom allegedly tried to drown her child because Jesus told her to. A woman once told me about a man who tried to get her to go out with him by claiming God told him to date her. Just whose voice are these people hearing? From what area code do these calls originate?

Is everyone who claims to hear God either manipulative or crazy? Sometimes it seems that way. And yet, conservative estimates suggests that one out of ten people has experienced a “God communication” event. A Gallup poll suggested the numbers are much higher: almost one in four people say they have heard a voice or seen a vision in response to prayer.

Many well-known and highly regarded people, including scholars and world leaders, claimed to have heard God’s voice, either audibly or as words in their own minds. Skeptics commonly lump such experiences together under the category of auditory hallucinations, yet most of the people who claim to have heard God speak are normal folks. They are not always religious, and many have done things in response to God’s voice that have changed society for the better.

In the Bible there are numerous examples of men and women who have heard God speak. Some of those people were, admittedly, a little strange, but most were ordinary people, whose experience of hearing God enriched their lives and benefitted the people around them.

But if God really does speak to people, how can a person know whether the words/ideas in his or her mind come from God or are just originating in his or her imagination? How can a person know that he or she is not self-deceived? The Bible, which teaches that God does speak to people, also warns its readers to watch out for people who falsely claim to have heard from God.

An answer consistent with Biblical teaching might be put this way: the only way to tell whether or not God is speaking is to become familiar with his voice. Nothing can replace familiarity with God’s voice.

I have a friend whom I have not seen or talked to in more than a year, but were he to call today, I would recognize him immediately. I know his voice. I know the kinds of things he says, and the way he says them. A person can, in much the same way, learn to recognize God’s voice.

Those who are familiar with God’s voice know that he never whines. He doesn’t beg, he doesn’t say, “Ple-e-e-ease!” He never insults. He doesn’t say, “Why are you so stupid?” He certainly never tells a person to do anything immoral or anything that contradicts his revelation through Jesus Christ and through the Scriptures.

The psalmist says, “The voice of the LORD is powerful; the voice of the LORD is majestic.” God speaks with authority. His voice is weighty. It has gravitas.

The best way to develop a familiarity with God’s voice is to spend time reading and thinking about the Bible. The Bible speaks in God’s tones, and someone who knows those tones is likely to recognize God’s voice. But a person who doesn’t know the Bible might accept calls coming from an altogether different area code than heaven, and not even know it.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, May 30, 2015

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Safe on the other side of the impossible

Posted on May 23, 2015 by salooper57

Malcolm Gladwell, author of David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, retold the story of David and Goliath for a TED talk in 2013. He told his audience that over the course of writing his book he learned “that everything I thought I knew about that story turned out to be wrong.”

Gladwell sets the stage by explaining the geography of the battle between the ancient Israelites and their adversaries to the west, the Philistines. The opposing armies met in the Shephelah, a region of interconnected valleys and ridges that connect the high country of the Israelites in the east to the coastal region of the Philistines in the west.

Whichever army marched down into the valley first would lose the high ground and be vulnerable, which neither was willing to do. So the Philistines proposed a single combat, winner-take-all solution to the deadlock. They sent their most fearsome soldier, Goliath, a man who was head and shoulders (and more) taller than anyone else. He was like a tree.

The Israelites quailed. No one would volunteer to face that monster of a man, until young David offered himself. David was not even in the army. He was a non-combatant; a shepherd, not a warrior. The Israelite commander initially rejected the idea, but later changed his mind. Who else could he send? So he offered the young hero his own armor and weapons, but David refused. “I’m not used to this stuff,” he said. He had a very different strategy in mind.

He went to the riverbed and picked up five smooth stones. The stones of that region are composed of barium sulfate and are twice as hard as an average stone. The sling David carried was no toy – it was an ancient artillery weapon, capable of launching a projectile at a speed of about 80 miles per hour.

Ancient slingers were accurate up to a range of 200 yards, could knock birds out of mid-air, and “sling a stone at a hair and not miss” (Judges 16:20). When David approached Goliath, he had no intention of engaging in hand-to-hand combat with him. He planned to stand out of reach and put a “bullet” right between the big man’s eyes.

Goliath himself, Gladwell suggests, was probably afflicted with acromegaly, a type of giantism that is caused by a tumor on the pituitary gland. Side effects include a progressive loss of vision or an increasing degree of double vision. That might explain why Goliath says that David was coming at him with sticks when, in fact, he had only one stick – a staff.

Goliath’s slow approach, the fact that his attendant led, rather than followed him, and his complete failure to grasp David’s strategy, all suggest to Gladwell that Goliath was visually impaired. As Gladwell portrays it, this was a fight David was bound to win.

Whether or not Gladwell’s depiction of the battle is correct, there is a theme in the David and Goliath story that runs through other biblical stories. At the beginning of his career, a person is sent on a dangerous – and seemingly impossible – mission with an apparent lack of resources. David approaches Goliath with a staff. Moses faces off with the world’s most powerful man, with nothing but a staff. Jesus sends his disciples into the world like sheep among wolves, and orders them to take nothing for their trip but a staff; no money, no extra clothes – just a staff.

It’s as if God trains his people by throwing them into an impossible situation without any of the resources commonly deemed necessary. This experience, repeated frequently in the life of biblical characters (think of Jacob, Elijah, the Apostle Paul, and others) is not intended to teach a person to “dig deep” and trust himself, but to look up and trust God.

A person needs to discover for himself that God is there and can be depended upon, no matter what the situation. Once he has emerged – safe and sound – on the other side of the impossible, he is ready to become God’s agent of change in the world.

But first he has to meet his Goliath.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, May 23, 2015

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Escape from the “Big Me” culture

Posted on May 16, 2015 by salooper57

New York Times columnist David Brooks recently released a new book titled The Road to Character (Random House). In an interview for Christianity Today with Jeff Haanen of the Denver Institute for Faith & Work, Brooks talked about what he describes as today’s “Big Me” culture.

He cites a Gallup survey from 1950, in which high school seniors were asked, “Are you a very important person?” In 1950, 12 percent of those surveyed said yes. Gallup asked the same question of high school seniors a few years ago, and 80 percent of the respondents said yes.

Psychologists sometimes have people fill out a questionnaire known as “The Narcissistic Personality Inventory,” and social scientists use similar instruments to ascertain the rise of narcissism culturally. Brooks points out that the median score on such tests has risen 30 percent in just twenty years.

Along with this rise in narcissism is a concomitant fall in the awareness of personal sin and weakness. As the language of sin has fallen into disuse in educated society, the very concept of sin has fallen out of favor. The combination of narcissism on the one hand and a total lack of the self-awareness of sin on the other, has created a “Big Me” culture in which self-promotion is not just tolerated, but expected – and, in some cases, required for success.

Our church is getting ready to call a pastor for a newly created staff position: The Pastor of Family Ministries. I’m part of a team that is receiving applications and reviewing resumes. We’re looking for candidates who understand and live in the way of Jesus, and have the ability to help parents enter and lead their children in it.

To date we have received about 30 resumes. Many of the applicants are simply looking for a church ministry position and are sending out applications in a shotgun blast pattern, hoping they’ll hit something worthwhile. They seem to think of church ministry as a career to pursue rather than a calling to heed. That is disconcerting enough.

But worse is the appalling self-promotion of many of the resumes. I realize that these people are merely following advice they found online for composing a resume, but it is disheartening to read. We are looking for humility, which is for us the indispensable virtue, but what we get are brag sheets and shameless self-aggrandizement.

There is a reason humility is so important: It opens the door and allows a person to work together with others, including God. Pride closes the door, leaving the person nothing to give beyond his individual abilities and experience. The humble person can actually accomplish more than the proud one because he or she does not work alone.

St. James, in a reference to the Old Testament book of Proverbs, writes: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” How crazy would it be for a church that’s trying to do God’s work to call a person to whom God is opposed?

It is important, however, to understand what humility is and what it is not. Humility is not the same thing as low self-esteem. Humility does not belittle or disparage one’s own gifts, any more than it would someone else’s gifts. It does not draw attention to itself, whether to boast about one’s accomplishments or to despair over one’s sinfulness or incompetence. C. S. Lewis was right: “True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.”

The best way to escape the “Big Me” culture that Brooks laments is to become a “Big God” person. Without a big God, a person has no choice but to become (or try to appear) a big person. Without a God who will justify you, you’ll have to justify yourself. It’s the person with a big God who can risk being small. It’s the person who has been captivated by the greatness of God and by the value of his fellows, who is set free to be himself; that is, who can be humble.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, May 16, 2015

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Creation’s biggest risk and its biggest reward

Posted on May 9, 2015 by salooper57

God paints on a big canvas. Traveling across our average-sized galaxy at the speed of light would take approximately 100,000 years. And the universe holds an estimated one hundred billion such galaxies. Some physicists believe that the universe itself is part of a multiverse that might hold billions of universes, and untold trillions of galaxies like our own.

It’s a big canvas. But, according to the Bible, the centerpiece of this act of creative genius is humanity. As far as we know, the stars and nebula and galaxies are backdrop (or maybe playground). The crown of creation is man.

“Man” is a collective noun denoting humans, both male and female. Unlike the other forms into which God joyfully shaped the four forces of nature – whether nebula or ocean, gold or iron, lion or turtle – man is specifically said to be formed in the image of God. Genesis says: “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule … over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

In a way that dust and stars and chimps and angels do not, man bears God’s image. In ancient times leaders would place images of themselves throughout their kingdoms (as they do today – one need only think of Kim Jong Un, the North Korean head of state, or Saddam Hussein, former president of Iraq.) Such images served to remind their subjects of their ruler.

When God made the earth, he intended to place his image everywhere, a constant reminder that he rules the world. Humans were intended to be the living image of God, ruling creation as his representatives, with his love and wisdom flowing through them to all creation. Everywhere one looked, or so it was intended, one would find the image of the joyful and gracious king, acting with joy and grace toward his creation.

When God created the stars that manufacture nuclear energy on levels that we cannot even imagine, he was running no risk. When he made dinosaurs the size of buildings, they posed no threat. When he sent the earth spinning at nineteen thousand miles per hour, and flicked it with his finger so that it sailed through space at 67,000 miles per hour, it was safer than a Sunday afternoon drive. But when he made man, he created the potential for disaster—and he knew it.

In creation, everything happened just as God said it would. The creation refrain is, “He said . . . and it was so.” When God said, “Let there be light,” it was so. When he said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water,” “it was so.” When he said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear,” “it was so.” But man, made in God’s image, was given a will of his own. When God said to man, “You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” it was not so.

Man was the X-factor. He was (from our perspective) creation’s biggest risk, and its biggest reward. The potential for humans – whether aged or unborn, free or serving a life sentence in solitary – is inestimable. Every human is priceless: the phone solicitor, the engineer, the restaurant server, the genius and the mentally handicapped, all are infinitely valuable.

According to the biblical story, the Creator’s perfect creation was damaged by human rebellion, and the canvas torn. That is why we have wars and poverty and illness and pollution and bigotry – all the problems with which we are so familiar. But the Creator is in the process of rescuing and restoring his beloved creation. He’s working on a “new creation.”

The first creation culminated in the making of man. The new creation commenced with the making of new men. The old creation took six days. The new creation is ongoing. It may be that those with faith in Jesus Christ are but its first brushstrokes, but the Artist has promised to present his masterpiece. When the finishing touches are complete and all things have been made new, then the long-awaited announcement will ring out: “It is done” (Revelation 21:6).

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 5/9/2015

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The most daring and imaginative artist ever

Posted on May 2, 2015 by salooper57

Creation is a work of art, and as with any work of art, as we immerse ourselves in it, we learn something about ourselves. But we also learn something about the Artist.
We learn that he is creative. He is, in fact, the Creator. This is a major biblical theme. Over sixty times, God is either said to have created or is referred to as the Creator. He is sculptor, painter and composer, and the universe is his block of marble, his canvass, and his staff paper.

God is the most daring, most imaginative artist ever. He has filled the seas with creatures of every shape and size and brilliant color. He paints his birds and fish and sunsets with hues so vivid and lines so bold that our most avant-garde painters seem tame by comparison.

The first verse of the Bible tells us that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and did so simply by commanding it to be. We see this again and again in the first chapter of Genesis. Like a leitmotif in a symphony, the words “And God said” repeat, with the subsequent refrain, “and it was so.”

Verse three: “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” Verses six and seven: “And God said, ‘Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water.’ And it was so.” Verse nine: “And God said, ‘Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.’ And it was so.” God did not paint Orion’s fireworks with a brush, but with a word. He creates by speaking.

An artist’s work is a revelation of the artist. Isn’t it possible to infer something of the character of Picasso from his paintings? After viewing “Seated Bather,” would anyone be surprised to learn that Picasso once said, “Every time I change wives, I should bury the last one. That way I’d be rid of them . . .” The artist is found in his work. It reveals him.

But what can be learned about God by looking at his art? Well, it’s obvious that he’s brilliant, and that he has breathtaking ability. Further, his art sparkles with joy. From the attention he shows his work, one can deduce a deep love for all that he has made. And it’s abundantly clear that when this artist creates something, he does it right.

One example covers all these things – that this artist does it right, that he possesses unimaginable ability, that he is really, really smart, and that he cares for his creation. All created matter is composed of four elemental forces: gravity, electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force and the strong nuclear force. Those four forces are the material universe, and combine in an endless variety of ways to form everything we see, everything that is.
But the respective strengths of the four forces must be precisely balanced for life to exist. For the purpose of illustration, assign to gravity, the weakest of the forces, a baseline strength of 1. The weak nuclear force comes next. It receives a relative strength of 1,034. Then comes electromagnetism, which is a thousand times stronger than the weak nuclear force. Finally comes the strong nuclear force, which is a hundred times stronger still. Gravity holds the planets in place. The weak nuclear force holds neutrons together. Electromagnetism holds you together. And finally, there is the strong nuclear force, which holds protons together and is a hundred million times stronger than gravity.

The universe depends on this precise balance. If gravity was a tiny fraction stronger or weaker, there would be no stars and planets. If the weak nuclear force was different by the smallest percentage, the universe would be composed entirely of hydrogen. If electromagnetism was either weaker or stronger, chemical bonds could not form. Physicists know of at least 25 other perfect balances in creation that are needed for life as we know it to exist.

Obviously the Artist loves his creation and treats it with great care. That is the good news of the Christian doctrine of Creation. And when his masterpiece was defaced by sin, as the Bible tells us it was, the Artist cared enough to restore it. That’s the good news of redemption.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 5/2/15

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Don’t carry invasive beliefs into church

Posted on April 25, 2015 by salooper57

There are boot brushes at the trailheads to several of our favorite places to hike, with signs instructing hikers to clean their boots. Most people want to clean their boots after hiking, not before. But these trailheads lead into nature preserves. The people that manage the preserves are hoping to prevent invasive species of weeds from finding their way into the preserve, then spreading and squeezing out the plants that are native to the area.

Maybe churches should have symbolic boot brushes outside their doors, with signs instructing worshipers to examine their beliefs before entering, lest they carry invasive doctrines into the church, where they might spread and squeeze out truths that are native to the faith.

According to a recent article in Christianity Today, invasive beliefs have entered and are continuing to enter the church. In “Which False Teachings Are Evangelical Christians Most Tempted to Believe In?” Cherith Fee Nording finds the ancient heresy Docetism – the belief that Jesus was not really human – still causing trouble in the modern church.

Nording notes that Evangelical Christians have, in response to modern challenges to the deity of Jesus, minimized the humanity of Jesus. She writes, “Too often he is the divine Son who borrowed a human body in order to teach, heal, and perform the miracles that proved his divine authority and his power to save us from sin.”

The early Church labeled this teaching a heresy and condemned it. When we forget that Jesus was and is fully human, we draw the erroneous conclusion that “because he is God, Jesus had power to be sinless and to do cool stuff. We’re not, so we don’t.”

And: “If Jesus isn’t really like us, then we are excused from being like him.” Yet this, the Apostle John writes, is the Christian’s goal and transforming hope: “…we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.”

Another contemporary heresy also has ancient roots, this time in the early second century teacher Marcion. Marcion rejected the authority of the Old Testament, and even went so far as to say the God of the Old Testament was not the God and Father of Jesus Christ. (I once heard a teacher espouse exactly this view to a group of high school students, oblivious to the fact he was spreading heresy.) Marcion’s anti-Old Testament views found a niche among anti-Semites and spread widely among early Gentile churches.

A successor to Marcion’s views is still present today, though less by intention than by attention deficit. In many churches, the story of Jesus has been completely removed from its Old Testament roots. His messiahship has been ignored, and his role has been restricted to that of personal savior, not Israel’s messiah and Lord of all the earth.

This has resulted in a highly individualistic expression of Christianity. It’s all about me –not a big surprise in contemporary western culture – getting into heaven when I die. The gospel becomes a sales pitch to prospective subscribers rather than an announcement of what God has done to redeem his fallen creatures and restore his damaged creation.

Worshipers often carry another invasive belief into the church: the belief that grace is opposed to works. This error probably has its roots in a fifth century controversy over the roles that God and humans play in salvation. When Pelagius, an influential teacher living in Rome, overstated the human role in salvation, Augustine, the famous bishop from North Africa, argued vigorously for the necessity of God’s unmerited and gracious action on human’s behalf.

But people have drawn the wrong conclusion from their debate. They have assumed that grace – God’s action on our behalf – is in conflict with human efforts. But grace is opposed to merit, not effort. Grace is, in fact, the trailhead of a path filled with good works for us to walk.

These doctrinal weeds are hard to eradicate. We should examine our beliefs from time to time, brush them off, and make sure we aren’t carrying any invasive species into the church.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, April 25, 2015

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Tomorrow may be too late

Posted on April 18, 2015 by salooper57

In all the class pictures that my mother kept and stored, from kindergarten on, I can find the same towheaded boy. His name was David. He was my sometimes friend and sometimes adversary. David was in nearly every class I took all the way through high school.

David and I formed a club when we were in grade school. He was the president. I was the vice president. The club dissolved a day after it was founded.

David was good with words. He used them like weapons. He would tease and poke fun until I would throw him to the ground or wrench his arm behind his back. He would say “Uncle” and stop teasing – until the next day, when it started all over again.

His ability with words came in handy. He used it to persuade his classmates to vote him “most likely to succeed.” He went off to college at Ohio State and then to graduate school. The last time I heard anything about David, he owned a chain of businesses in Florida. He succeeded.

Once when we were much younger, David produced what was then called a “nickel bag” of marijuana. That began a conversation that somehow came round to talking about God. David told me then that he intended to “get religion” someday, when he was old, “like seventy.” Until then, he intended to have fun.

I have occasionally thought about David over the years. Did he ever get married? Does he have kids? Does he still run his business operations? But mostly I wonder if he ever “got religion.” He was so sure, when he was a young man, that he would find the door open for him to turn to God when he was older. I wonder.

It’s not that I think he will find the door locked. I’m just not sure that, after all the other doors David has walked through, he will be able to find the door at all. I am even less sure that he will still want to find it.

This is the dilemma for people who put off turning to God. God is ready, eager even, to welcome them back, but the longer they ignore him, the harder it is for them to want to come back. Some, like King Saul in the Bible, find at the end of their life they cannot muster the desire to turn to God. Worse yet, some find they cannot want God to be God.

After spending a lifetime ignoring God and denying his claim on one’s life – or even denying his existence – can a person still turn to God? Without a doubt, a person can still turn to God. Does it happen often? About that, I am doubtful, but it does happen.

Anthony Flew, the Oxford analytical philosopher and son of a Methodist preacher, spent most of his career as an apologist for atheism. Though he attended C. S. Lewis’s Socratic Club at Oxford, he rejected Lewis’s arguments and went on to author books advocating an atheist position. Then at the age of 81, Professor Flew shocked the philosophical world by announcing that he had become convinced of the existence of God.

The Bible has its own story of a late-in-life conversion. One of the men executed alongside Jesus, whom the biblical writers describe as a robber and a criminal, turned to Jesus shortly before his death and said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” This is extraordinary on many levels, not the least being that he was capable of expressing faith in the last minutes of his life. The Bible, it’s been said, provides one story of a death-bed conversion to keep us from despair, and only one story to keep us from presumption.

So is it ever too late to turn to God, to open oneself to spiritual truth, and start a new kind of life? As far as God, “who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth,” is concerned, it’s never too late. There is no objective obstacle that can prevent a person from coming to him, whatever his or her age. But the subjective obstacle of a deep and engrained resistance to God may prove insuperable. It is for this reason that St. Paul urges, “Now is the time … now is the day of salvation.” Tomorrow may just be too late.

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