How to Drain That Other Swamp

Posted on June 15, 2024 by salooper57

In 2016, Donald Trump reintroduced the phrase “drain the swamp” into Washington-ese. He may have remembered how Ronald Reagan used the phrase in 1983 when he said he was in Washington to “drain the swamp.” However, the slogan predates these Republicans by a long shot. It was first introduced by American socialists Winfield Gaylord and Victor Berger as early as 1912.

Gaylord spoke metaphorically of draining the “capitalist swamp,” but he probably took the phrase from U.S. efforts to drain literal Panamanian swamps in the decades long project to build a canal. Hundreds, and perhaps thousands of workers had died from mosquito-borne diseases like malaria and yellow fever during the 33-year construction program.

Mr. Reagan resurrected the metaphor to signal his intent to root out corruption in Washington, D.C., and Donald Trump followed his lead. Though I am not any kind of expert on swamps, it doesn’t seem to me that Washington has become any less swampy. Though there are a lot of decent people working there, the infestation of greed and self-interest is as bad as ever.

The swamp problem is not just in Washington; it is much more provincial than that. It is so close as to be present in the human heart. This is how Jesus spoke of it: “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person.”

The swamp in Washington will never be drained as long as we keep sending swamp creatures there. And we are all swamp creatures. That is the thing no one wants to admit.

Ours is the generation that discovered systemic evils and forgot about personal ones. But Jesus, on at least three occasions, spoke of people as evil. St. Paul acknowledged that “nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh.” This is not to say that everything everyone does is evil. It is to say that everything everyone is has been tainted with evil. Under the right circumstances – say, in a position of power in Washington, D.C. – that evil can emerge and spread.

If draining the swamp must begin in individual’s hearts, and we cannot even admit that our hearts are swampy, there is no road forward. But what if we can admit that we have swampy hearts where some bad things hide? Can that swamp be drained?

“Drained” is perhaps not the right word. The Bible speaks of “cleansing” the heart. Indeed, God has designated the human heart a superfund site and has expended infinite resources to clean it up. He knows it is the only way the world will ever be set right.

Perhaps “cleansed” is more correct than “drained,” but how does that cleansing happen? It is more on the order of Hercules cleaning the Augean stables than Teddy Roosevelt draining the Panamanian swamps. In the fifth of Hercules twelve labors, he was required to clean the massive stables of King Augeas in one day. The king owned thousands of heads of livestock, which his herders drove into the stables each night—stables that were never cleaned.

Rather than grabbing a shovel, Hercules diverted two rivers, the Alpheus and Peneus, so that they were channeled right through the stables, washing away all the filth they contained. Hercules made the preparations, but the rushing water did the work.

Something analogous to this is required for the clean-up effort when it comes to people. We have our own role to play – as the biblical writers make abundantly clear – but the streams that do the work come from outside us. Those streams are faith, hope, and love. Whenever there is a confluence of those streams, people are changed, cleaned up, made new.

It is unrealistic to expect swamp creatures (like us) to drain the swamp. It goes against our nature. Before that can happen, we need, in the words of the old spiritual, “to be changed, changed from this creature, Lord, that I am.” That change cannot be initiated through political, technological, or organizational means. It is a spiritual problem which requires a spiritual solution.

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The Role of the Holy Spirit in Prayer

Posted on June 11, 2024 by salooper57

This sermon is based on Matthew 7:7-11 and Romans 8:26-27. It explores the ongoing relationship of the Holy Spirit with the believer in prayer. Understanding that prayer is a joint venture between God and the believer is crucial to an effective prayer life. You can watch by clicking below. If you prefer to read, the text is included under the link.

https://www.christianworldmedia.com/watch?v=3Pvt5g0l83cV. (Start time is 25:33.)

(Matthew 7:7-11) Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

When the psychologist and Christian writer Larry Crabb was 10 years old, he first heard Matthew 21:22, where Jesus, whom he knew never lied, said, “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.”

He ran outside, stood on the driveway, closed his eyes tight, and prayed: God, I want to fly like Superman. And I believe you can do it. So, I’ll jump, and you take it from there.

He jumped four times—and each time landed half a second later and half a foot further down the drive. He had believed (or at least he tried to believe), and he had asked, just like Jesus said. But he didn’t receive. And so began Larry Crabb’s lifelong confusion about prayer.[1]

Lots of us have been confused. The promises regarding prayer, some made by Jesus himself, seem so extravagant, and yet our experience of prayer seems so paltry. We have had some answers that we can point to, but we’ve also had many letdowns. Is it possible that we have misunderstood Jesus? Or misunderstood prayer? Or misunderstood ourselves?

The answer, I think, is … yes, yes, and yes. For example, we might misunderstand Jesus and so mistake ourselves for the recipients of this promise. But Jesus was talking to his disciples (5:1). He did not and could not make this promise to the Pharisees or Sadducees, even though they were very religious people. He would not say it to the irreligious. He could only say this to “his disciples.”

They had devoted themselves to him. They used their energy, time, and money in learning to live the Jesus way, which they practiced until it became “their way.” Their goal was to do what Jesus would do if he were (like them) a farmer or a fisherman, if he were married to their spouse or was raising their kids.

Today’s disciples are in exactly the same position. They are learning to live with God the Jesus way. They are learning to do what Jesus would do if he were in their place – if he were an engineer, a store employee, a CNC operator, a teacher, or an insurance salesman. They are learning to do what Jesus would do if he were married to their spouse or raising their kids.

So, when we read what Jesus says here, we must remember who his audience is. He is not making these promises to moderately religious folk safely ensconced in society’s hierarchy. He is making them to disciples who have relinquished the ordinary way people live for the extraordinary way of Christ. The “everyone” Jesus mentions in verse 8 – “everyone who asks” – is everyone within the corps of disciples.

But in saying that, I am not trying to explain away the promise. Jesus absolutely meant what he said. This is not hyperbole or exaggeration. Just remember that he is talking to people who were all in, to disciples, who had committed themselves to Jesus through thick and thin. It would be a mistake to suppose these promises were made to anyone else.

I make a point of this not to gloss over what Jesus said but to save the moderately religious from confusion and doubt when their prayers are not answered – which will certainly be most of the time. There are no promises of answered prayer extended to half-hearted Christians. The adventure to which Jesus invites us is reserved for those who are all-in.

It is better from the outset to know that. If I, a half-hearted Christian, expect God to answer my prayers, I am like a man that goes to a business owner known for his generosity. He explains that his financial responsibilities have increased because he’s gotten married, and he really needs $25 an hour to make it. The compassionate owner asks the man’s name and writes it down. They he says, “Let me see what I can do.”

The businessman asks his secretary to bring up their files on John Smith … and discovers that John Smith doesn’t even work for him. John Smith is asking for $25 an hour but he is not even employed in the shop.

That is what it is like when a person who is not a disciple of Jesus assumes that God is obligated to answer his requests. That person neither understands Jesus, nor himself. He mistakenly thinks that Jesus made this promise to him when he has merely overheard Jesus talking to his own disciples.

What did he tell those disciples? He told them that God will answer their prayers, but that they must persevere in praying. When Jesus says, “Ask, and you will receive; seek, and you will find; knock and the door will be opened,” he is not talking about asking once, or seeking for a minute, or rapping a brief knock. In Greek, each of these commands is in a tense that implies ongoing action.

When I was pastoring a church in northeastern Ohio, I met a man whose wife had been diagnosed with cancer. We were standing in a hospital hallway and I was about to pray for her when he said, “I prayed once. I am not going to dishonor God by praying again.” That man didn’t understand the first thing about prayer. Jesus expected his people to pray and keep on praying.

But why? Why is once not enough?

There is much about this I do not understand. Someone has said, “I cannot tell you why a prayer that has been prayed for ten years is answered on the 1,000th request when God has met the first 999 with silence.”[2] I cannot tell you either. But I can tell you that Jesus wants us to persist in prayer, to “pray always and not give up” (Luke 18:1).

A Chicago company is one of the world’s largest magazine fulfillment firms. They handle millions and millions of subscriptions. (They are the ones that send out renewal and expiration notices.) Because of a computer glitch, they sent a rancher in Colorado 9,734 separate mailings informing him that his subscription to National Geographic had expired.

He may have ignored the first one or two, but 9,734 got his attention. He drove to the post office, which was miles away, and sent in the money to renew his subscription. He added a note that said, “I give up!”

Is that why we persist in prayer, so that God will give up and do what we want? No, we persist in prayer in order to participate with God in what he is doing in the world. Remarkable as it seems, he intends human beings to be his coworkers, and prayer is the nexus of that work.

Yet no answer to prayer – not even the healing of our best beloved from the illness that threatens their life – will ever content us. After our best beloved is healed, discontentment will grow again. We will not be content until we become like Christ. God knows this, and he uses even our troubles and our needs to transform us into Christlikeness. Prayer – continuing, earnest prayer – is one of God’s chief instruments in shaping us into contented, joyous, productive people.

God cares about what happens in us and not just what happens to us. Prayer not only works to change things; it changes us. And when we are praying as Jesus intended, our requests will change as well. That’s important to understand.

If you are old enough, you will remember analog TV and its blurry, fuzzy pictures. When I was a kid, when my favorite rerun wasn’t on the nearby Cleveland stations, I could get it on one of the Toledo channels. But Toledo was far enough away that the picture was usually fuzzy. So, I would “adjust the dial,” zero in on the frequency, until the best picture I could get emerged.

Something similar happens when we pray. We need to adjust the dial. Our first request got us going in the right direction – we’re in the frequency range – but we are not yet asking for what God is ready to give. If we will continue to pray, the Spirit can help us dial in, and find that right frequency: “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” (Romans 8:26). Effective prayer is always a cooperative venture between us and God. It is a process, not an isolated occurrence.

We take for granted that our first prayer is a direct hit on the will of God. So, if the answer doesn’t come, we get discouraged. But that is not how prayer usually works. We need to keep praying so that the Spirit can steer our prayers, alter their course, change their goal until we are asking for what God intends to give. But the Spirit cannot do that when we’re not praying, just as we cannot steer a bicycle that is not moving.

During the Second World War, artillery commanders would fire at enemy locations, but from where they were, they could rarely see if they had hit their target. So, they would have “spotters” behind enemy lines, reporting back by walkie-talkie. A spotter might say: “A quarter-mile short of target to the south, 750 yards wide of target to the west.” The big gun would then be redirected and fired again. This time: “One-eighth mile south, 350 yards west.” Redirect again. And again.

In our lives, we know something needs to happen and we pray in the general direction of the need, but our request is a quarter-mile short and 750 yards wide. If we stop praying right then, we will never hit the target, we’ll not see God’s answer, and we’ll not be changed into the confident, joyous believers that God intends us to be.

God wants to answer our prayers. If you don’t believe that, you will never be any good at prayer. God has given us prayer for our joy (John 16:24). He wants us to partner with him in his great campaign. He wants us to succeed, to overcome, to be productive with him. Remember what Jesus said? “…ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit” (John 15:8). God wants to give. He wants to answer our prayers.

Years ago, a sixth-grader’s dad wanted to reward his son for his performance in school, so he took him to K-Mart. As they walked through the entrance door, he made a sweeping gesture with his hand toward the whole store, and said: “To congratulate you, I’ll buy you anything in this whole store tonight.” The boy’s eyes widened at the thought of the possibilities.

But he was a boy, and he didn’t yet have a grasp on how money works or how much of it his very successful dad possessed. So, he didn’t even look at the huge stereo systems, expensive bikes, or anything that cost over a hundred dollars. He chose a cassette tape case that cost forty-some dollars. Only many years later did he find out that his dad had a thousand dollars in his pocket that night. What’s more, he brought his checkbook just in case that wasn’t enough.

God has more in his pocket than we can imagine.[3]He is ready to give – not to reward us for our performance, but to include us in his. And that happens as we pray. Prayer is more important to the Christian life than we have begun to realize.

Please note that Jesus does not rest this remarkable promise of answered prayer on our spiritual maturity, exceptional faith, or successful performance. He rests it on God’s character. Look again at verses 9-11.

 “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” 

The basis for this promise is the unchanging nature of the gracious and compassionate God, not the attainments of his imperfect little children. Thank God that is so, for we are still very imperfect and very little.

During the height of the pandemic, grocery shopping services sprang up all around. You can download the app, order your groceries, and someone will pick them up for you and deliver them to your door. But global supply chain issues left grocery store shelves depleted, and often what you ordered wasn’t there. So, the services substituted recommended replacements for unavailable items.

A couple of years ago, the Wall Street Journal ran an article on these shopping apps. They learned that order packers often replaced missing items with whatever they could find. Roses were swapped for bell peppers. A thermometer was switched for mac and cheese. A rapid COVID test replaced Halls cough drops.[4]

God is not like that. He will not give us a stone in place of bread or a serpent in place of a fish. If we don’t receive what we have asked for, we are probably not yet dialed in on what God wants to give us. We mustn’t give up. If God has a substitution recommendation, it will always be an upgrade, something “immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine.” But he wants to give us what we ask.

That is why we keep asking, seeking, and knocking. By doing so, we give the Spirit opportunity to work with us to dial in our prayers. God wants to give, and he wants to give us what we ask, for our joy, his glory, and the advancement of his plan for the world.

There seems to be a progression here in what Jesus says. He starts with asking, which, as Andrew Murray pointed out in his classic book, With Christ in the School of Prayer, means asking for something. Seeking goes beyond asking. “Seek” is the strong word biblical writers use of searching for God himself. For example, “Look to the Lord and his strength; seek his face always” (Ps. 105:4).

But knocking goes beyond even seeking. Knocking opens the way into God’s presence; it opens the door to join him in what he is doing. God made us for this. It is his desire. It is our destiny.

Let’s apply this. God wants to answer you, to give you what you ask. That’s how he wants this to work. You ask; he gives. In that way, you have joy, and he gets glory. He does not want you to ask for one thing when he intends to give another. He wants to give what you ask. I don’t think we appreciate this enough. But that means asking for what he wants to give, and for that we need the Spirit’s help.

Our asking does not usually start off on target. (This may be the main thing many of us need to understand.) If what we are asking is a quarter mile short and 750 yards wide of what God wants to give (which is often the case), that doesn’t mean we should give up or settle for something other than what we ask. It means we need to keep asking, trusting God’s Spirit to keep dialing in our request until it hits the target.

It is not enough to say, “I guess it wasn’t God’s will,” and give up. It is God’s will to give and it is God’s will that you ask. That means, if he has not yet answered your prayer, keep praying and pay closer attention to the Spotter – the Holy Spirit. He will guide your prayer to the target of God’s will. Don’t give up. God wants this for you. And it entails benefits that go far beyond the answer to this or that request, for the process shapes us into people we would not otherwise be, people who are a delight to God and to themselves.

Blessing/Sending

Though we leave this building, we do not leave God’s presence. The Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness, interceding for us when we don’t know how to pray. Rest in the sweet assurance that God works all things for good for those who love Him. We are more than conquerors through Him who loves us.

[1] Larry Crabb, “Great Expectations,” Pray! magazine (November/December 2006), p. 34

[2] Stand Firm (September 1999), p.19

[3] Steve DeNeff and David Drury, Soul Shift (Wesleyan Publishing House, 2011), p. 55

[4] Jem Bartholomew, “Raspberries for Cauliflower? The Bizarre World of Online Grocery Store Substitutions,” The Wall Street Journal (2-3-22).

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The Hardest, Gladdest Prayer: Learning to Call God Father

Posted on June 8, 2024 by salooper57

When we recite the Lord’s Prayer, as millions of people worldwide do regularly, we begin with the word, “Our.” However, in the Greek in which the New Testament was written, the first word of the prayer is “Father.” It is the first word, and the most important. If we cannot say, “Father,” and mean it, we will not benefit from the rest of the prayer as we should.

Until “Father” becomes a word we love and speak with joy, praying the Lord’s prayer will prove difficult. The Scottish novelist, poet, and preacher George Macdonald once said, “The hardest, gladdest thing in the world is, to cry ‘Father!’ from a full heart.” Those who can make this hard, glad cry can pray the Lord’s Prayer to great advantage.

But why should calling God “Father” from a full heart be hard to do? For clearly, it is. It does not come naturally to people and, for many, it doesn’t come at all.

One does not need to look far to find an answer to why calling God “Father” is difficult. An after-school program director recently told me that three out of four of his students do not have a father living in the home. Some students do not even know who their father is. When a father is absent during a person’s formative years, one of the chief helps in relating to God is missing.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of children living only with their mothers has doubled in the last fifty years. These children are more likely to live in poverty, to go to prison, to experience unwanted pregnancy, and to abuse drugs and alcohol. The loss of dads in the home has been disastrous.

The absence of dads has also had a deleterious effect on faith. It is not, I think, coincidental that America is experiencing a crisis of faith at the same time it is experiencing a crisis of fatherhood. As recently as the 1990s, 90 percent of all Americans identified as Christian. There has been a startling drop in that number, but among those raised in the dad-less years the decrease has been greatest. When fathers fell away from the family, children fell away from the faith.

Yet many people who have trouble crying “‘Father’ from a full heart have not fallen away from the faith. They are genuine Christians who find it either difficult or unhelpful to think of God as their heavenly Father. The problem for these sincere believers is often not that dad was absent but that dad was present in ways that caused them to distrust fathers.

As a pastor, I have met many such people. Their dads were not absent but distant, uninvolved, and disinterested. If, as is certainly true, children learn what fatherhood is all about from their dads, these people learned that fathers are distant, uninvolved, and disinterested. Such an upbringing makes faith in God as Father much more difficult.

Other people had a dad that was too involved. He was demanding, critical, and impossible to please. These people struggle to believe that God can ever be happy with them. They do not relate to God; they perform for him. And they feel their performance never measures up.

Still others were raised by manipulative, deceitful, and abusive fathers. I know a gracious Christian woman whose mother abandoned her to her father’s sexual abuse for years. She learned that a father is an unstoppable force that hurts and uses people at will.

It is not just bad dads who make it difficult for people to call God “Father.” Inconsistent dads do too, and we who are dads are all inconsistent to one degree or another. Sometimes we are involved and sometimes we are not. The “fun dad” is sometimes unreasonably angry. The wise dad occasionally does something stupid.

On Father’s Day, we don’t celebrate perfect dads, but good dads who try to be better dads. Although the reflection they offer of the heavenly Father is inevitably distorted, they give us glimpses of what he is like. Such dads are worth celebrating. They are more important than we know. 

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Who’s Asking: Mark 11:22-25

Posted on June 6, 2024 by salooper57

Here is a link to the sermon Who’s Asking. It explores the question: “What kind of people get answers to prayer?” Hope you enjoy and find it helpful. The sermon begins at the 36:35 mark.

https://www.christianworldmedia.com/watch?v=XYO44rkrb5-k

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The Gospel in a World of Fake News

Posted on June 1, 2024 by salooper57

In 2016, the Oxford Dictionaries people chose the term “post-truth” as their “word of the year.” Questions about truth and even doubts about there being such a thing pervade society. A number of things have brought us to this place, not least of which is the ubiquitous presence in our lives of social and news media.

Our days are saturated with information, whether about people we know on Facebook or about the president of the United States on the evening news. Some of this news (and in certain settings, much of it) is either fake or “enhanced” news. Fake news reports something that is not true and has not happened as though it is true and has happened. Enhanced news presents something that has happened but does so in a way that is intended to move the reader or listener in a certain direction.

News corporations pride themselves on their fair and accurate reporting. Yet they frequently allow or even direct reporters to introduce emotionally ladened words into a story, reflecting at best the news staffs’ biases and at worst exposing a calculated attempt to shape listener’s views and influence their actions. That is enhanced news.

We cannot trust what we hear and see. Online sites employ tools to covertly influence our thinking. Some are relatively straightforward: paying people to submit likes or to become followers. Others are more sophisticated, like stuffing online polls, forcing site owners to take down stories, crashing entire sites, and more.

A study from Carnegie Mellon found that something like 45% of tweets on the coronavirus originated from bots – automated computer programs – instead of people. Furthermore, 80% of the most retweeted posts on Twitter (now X) came from bots. The “likes” that boost a post and give it visibility often come from bots created by people who are trying to game the system.

In this environment, who can we trust? I say, “In this environment,” but fake and enhanced news is not new; it has been around forever. It’s just the form it takes that is new.

The difference between real news and fake news is that real news reports something that has already happened, while fake (or enhanced) news is intended to bring about something the reporter hopes will happen. That distinction has ramifications beyond the evening news. It can teach us something important about religion.

One of the big words of the Christian faith is “gospel,” which means something like “good news.” The word has an important place in the Old Testament and is central in the New. The gospel is to the Bible what the core is to an apple. It is to the church what the constitution is to the country. The gospel is not fake news; not enhanced news; it is good news.

That means the gospel is news about something that has happened. One scholar suggests translating the word as “newsflash.” Someone else thought “breaking news” might be better. Both have their problems, but they do capture something fundamental about the word: it is a report about something that has already happened.

Christians who fail to grasp this end up following the example of the news corporations mentioned above rather than that of Jesus and the apostles. They come to think of the gospel as an instrument to make something happen rather than an announcement about what has already happened.

Rather than sharing the remarkable news that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself,” they make a pitch. It goes like this: “You can go to heaven when you die if you are ready to make a decision.” That decision, which usually includes “repentance toward God and … faith in our Lord Jesus Christ,” is not wrong; it is right. But the decision is a response to the good news, not the news itself.

When we present the pitch as if it were the good news, our hearers will lack an adequate understanding of the faith. If they trust in anything, it is liable to be their decision rather than God’s world-saving intervention. And that is simply not enough to sustain them in the faith.

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The Gift of the Spirit (Acts 2)

Posted on May 29, 2024 by salooper57

I have been trying to figure out how to capture video from our streaming service so that I could post only the sermon on my blog. Two requests for help have gone unanswered to date. So, if any of you know how to snip the sermon out of the stream on a Christian World Media format, please comment below. For now, I will provide a link and a counter number for the spot the sermon begins.

Go to https://www.californiaroad.org/pages/watch and click on the Sunday, May 19th service. The sermon begins at approximately 54:10.

This survey of Acts 2 can be outlined this way: What Happened: The Event (vv. 1-4); What Was Going On: The Setting (vv. 5-13); What it Meant: The Sermon (vv. 14-35); What to Do About It: The Application (vv. 36-41); and What Resulted: The Church (vv. 42-47).

If you have comments, be sure to leave them below.

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How to Find Freedom From Anger

Posted on May 25, 2024 by salooper57

A professor at the University of Texas once gave students an unusual assignment: if you have ever thought about killing someone, write an essay about it. 91 percent of the men and 84 percent of the women handed in detailed, vivid homicidal fantasies. Shootings are now so common that they receive little press unless multiple people are injured or killed. What’s going on in America?

Surely, people don’t want to be angry. Or do they? Is there something that people get, something they value, from being angry?

Certainly, there is. Anger brings a burst of adrenaline; it is energizing. It provides a counterbalance to the harm people have suffered, offering a peculiar kind of equilibrium. Anger serves as a shield to protect people from further hurt. In some cases, people’s identity is indivisible from their anger. They need their anger; without it, they would not know who they are.

Anyone who has been around the church for a while knows that anger is not just a problem “out there.” It’s in here too. It is in the church, disrupting relationships and injuring families. Parental anger has caused many young people to doubt, and eventually abandon, the faith mom and dad confess. Angry splits have brought the church into disrepute.

Doctors now prescribe medication to treat menopausal hot flashes, but is there any remedy for this other kind of hot flash, the kind that injures and disrupts? There is, and it has been around for a long time, but few people know about it and fewer still are willing to take the prescribed treatment.

Anger disorder was right at the top of issues that Jesus addressed. In his deservedly famous Sermon on the Mount, Jesus spoke about the beautiful kind of life that makes living worthwhile, then went on to address the most pernicious threats to that life. First on his list was anger. Anger is a headwaters from which flows a virtual cataract of evils that can destroy families and friendships, communities and even nations.

A newspaper column does not provide sufficient space to tease out Jesus’s brilliant teaching about anger, which can be found in Matthew 5:21-26, though readers would do well to pan out and read Matthew 5-7 in its entirety. I intend simply to point out a few conclusions I have formed from studying Jesus’s and the apostles’ teaching on the subject.

For someone who desires to be free of destructive anger, the first step is to decide to stop being an angry person. Perhaps that sounds ridiculous. If it were that easy, everyone would do it. But no one said it would be easy. And even if it were, some – and perhaps even most – people would still hesitate to give up their anger.

The biblical writers repeatedly say things like, “Put away anger. Lay it aside. Get rid of it.” It is natural to think (perhaps with a flare of anger), “I would if I knew how.” But how is not the first concern. Knowing how to put aside anger no more guarantees that a person will do so than knowing how to diet guarantees a person will lose weight. The first step is to firmly decide to stop being an angry person.

It is important to understand that anger is a natural response to a blocked desire. It is even more important to understand that we are more than our desires. That is confusing in a culture where people so identify with their desires that they have no identity apart from them. It is possible to acknowledge desires without always acting on them. It is more than possible. It is necessary for even a tolerable life.

It is not enough to try to stop anger; it must be replaced. This is an intentional process that requires serious thought. A person needs a replacement for their anger. If they don’t have one, they will fall right back into it. Scripture offers plenty of help in finding a replacement.

Fear is an obstacle to overcoming anger. People will only lay down their shield of anger when they have a replacement for it: a shield of faith. For that they need God.

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Antinomianism in America: Adrift on a Perilous Sea

Posted on May 18, 2024 by salooper57

We have a problem. Americans have been infected by antinomianism, and it is modifying their behavior, impacting their relationships, and weakening social bonds.

If antinomianism is a disease, it is not a physical one. If it is contagious, it is not spread by touch nor is it airborne – unless by that one means it is disseminated through the airwaves. Antinomianism is an old word which, broken down etymologically, means “against law.” An antinomian is a person who believes that laws, whether divinely sourced or socially sanctioned, do not apply to them. They think of themselves as above, or at least outside, the law.

There are various strains of antinomianism. The theological version was rampant in England and America in the seventeenth century. Our forefathers tried to stamp it out when it spread rapidly through the Boston area in the mid-1600s, but they failed to eradicate it.

Politics has its own variety of antinomianism. When the former president boasted, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters,” it was a very antinomian thing to say. Recent polls show a third of voters believe it might be necessary to break the law to obtain a desired outcome. That bespeaks antinomianism.

Theological antinomianism is spreading once again. There are teachers who claim it is unnecessary and even counterproductive to obey “the law,” which for some includes even the commands of Jesus. But what do they mean by unnecessary? Unnecessary for getting into heaven? Unnecessary for leading a productive life? Unnecessary for spiritual health?

The antinomian tendencies in society do not bode well for the future of our nation, but it is antinomianism in the church that concerns me most. Something is wrong when Jesus’s followers, in the distressing words of St. James, “speak against the law.” Teachers who consider God’s law a barrier to spiritual health are out of step with both Jesus and the Apostle Paul.

My wife and I once spent a few days with friends aboard their boat in the Florida keys. One day we left the marina and motored through a long channel and out to a reef to go snorkeling. The channel was narrow but deep enough for large boats to navigate. However, if even a pleasure craft were to wander outside the channel, it was liable to run aground. We saw numerous derelict boats on our way to the reef.

The vast expanse of water outside the channel looked safe and inviting. And it clearly offered the shortest route to our destination. Why not take it?

Is that, I wonder, what religious people are thinking who espouse an antinomian position? “Staying within the rules is fine if that’s what you want. But we will get to heaven anyway, so why would anyone, except a religious legalist – who only half trusts Christ – insist on staying within the rules?

But the “rules” were never about getting into heaven. Jesus did not give his disciples commands so they would get an A on the final exam. The commands were given to guide them into a life of joy.

At the heart of the universe – which is to say, at the heart of God – one does not find endless rules but endless joy. God, who is the most joyous being in the universe, did not give commands to make people miserable but to fill them with joy. His commands enable us to move unimpeded through life and reach our goal with joy.

The sailor who has left the channel only to bury his keel in the mucky bottom is not having a good time. Neither is the person who has run aground in the muck of greed, resentment, and hypocrisy. The commands are channel markers that guide people on their way to joy.

If the commands are channel markers, the channel itself is love. While we are loving God and loving others, we never need to worry about running aground, which is why St. Augustine said, “Love God and do what you will.” When we are loving God, whatever we do will be just fine, for “love,” as St. Paul insisted, is nothing less than “the fulfillment of the law.”

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Ascension Day: It Matters More Than You Know

Posted on May 11, 2024 by salooper57

In 1925, Pope Pious XI introduced “The Feast of Christ the King” into the liturgical calendar. It came on the last Sunday of October which, metaphorically speaking, is the no-man’s land of the church calendar. In 1970, Pope Paul VI moved the feast to the final Sunday before Advent. Catholics, of course, recognized the new holy day, but so did many other Christians around the world.

The problem, as N. T. Wright points out, is that the church already had a feast day of Christ the King. It is called Ascension Day, which is being celebrated as I write this column. The new feast divests the ancient one of some of its meaning, relegating Ascension Day to a kind of going away party for Jesus.

That is not how Christians should think of the ascension of Christ. It was not the departure of the world’s helper but the installation of the world’s king. At the ascension, Christians ought to celebrate the fact that Jesus is already enthroned as the world’s king. The children’s Sunday School pictures that show Jesus hovering in the air ought to go on to depict him sitting on a throne.

The story of the ascension is told in the Book of Acts, which is a history of the church’s first few decades. It was written by St. Luke, who was a friend and coworker of the Apostle Paul. For Luke, the ascension was not a forlorn occasion when the church said goodbye to Jesus. It was the exciting time when the church was sent on a mission by its king.

This is something the church has often missed, and perhaps even more so since its recent juggling of feast days. Jesus Christ is not waiting to be king. He has already been installed on the throne and as king he has already sent his people on a mission.

If we do not recognize this truth, we will never understand the Book of Acts, nor the biblical story of which it is a part, nor the role that twenty-first century Christians are expected to play. To grasp the message of the Bible, we much appreciate the crucial concepts of king and kingdom.

In the first paragraph of the Book of Acts, St. Luke writes that the risen Jesus spoke to his apostles, the church leaders he had chosen, about the kingdom of God. The biblical hope of a good kingdom, of God’s kingdom, did not become irrelevant with Jesus’s death and resurrection. It was the primary subject of Jesus’s conversation with his leaders even after the resurrection.

In the last sentence of the Book of Acts, we find the Apostle Paul still talking about the kingdom of God decades after the church was founded. The technique of raising a topic at the beginning and again at the end of a section of literature, whether a short passage or an entire book, is known as an inclusio. It implies that the text is about that topic. Luke wanted readers to know that his book is about the kingdom of God and its king.

The kingdom theme is writ large across the pages of the Bible. It begins with God taking his throne and assigning his noble stewards – human beings – the responsibility to rule over the earth. But this kingdom is thrown into anarchy in Genesis 3 and the rest of the Old Testament explores the hope that the good kingdom will be restored. By the end of the Old Testament, however, it still seems far away.

The New Testament opens with the stirring announcement that “the kingdom of God is near!” Jesus declares, “The Kingdom of God has come upon you!” and he sends out his emissaries to proclaim its arrival to everyone who will listen.

The ascension of Jesus means the long-awaited kingdom has been established. Nevertheless, as Jesus himself taught, the kingdom awaits a still greater fulfillment upon his return and the elevation of his people. On Ascension Day, the church celebrates what happened when Christ ascended to the throne, what is happening now through his reign, and what will happen when he returns for his people.

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Churches: Go Small to Get Big Results

Posted on May 4, 2024 by salooper57

My wife and I have worshiped in some very large churches over the past six months. Thousands of people flood their campuses each Sunday. Their worship leaders are professional musicians. Their pastors are great communicators and exceptional leaders. I enjoyed my time in these churches and came away having heard some helpful sermons.

Many pastors I know work in towns that have smaller populations than the Sunday attendance of some of these churches. On the American religious scene, the megachurch is the epitome of ecclesial success. Nevertheless, if churches want to become more effective, they should consider going smaller.

By “going smaller” I don’t mean they need to reduce their Sunday morning on-site attendance or their online participation – hardly that; the more the merrier. I mean they need to see beyond big productions to transformative personal encounters. A church is not effective because many people attend Sunday worship gatherings but because the people who do attend stay engaged all week long.

This engagement requires rich community within the church, which is more than a “just Jesus and me” affair. A church with ten thousand people and a multimillion dollar budget is a failure if its people don’t spend meaningful time together.

In a successful church, the ministry is not done for attendees but by attendees. The minister is not the guy who stands on the stage – or at least the minister is not only that guy. Everyone who is part of the church is a minister. This doesn’t mean that everyone preaches or officiates at weddings, funerals, and baptisms. It means that everyone uses their God-given gifts to serve others.

The successful church functions to “equip the saints for the work of the ministry.” The ministerial staff is not hired to do the ministry for people, but to equip them to do the work themselves. The nature of this ministry work varies depending on the giftedness of the person doing it. One person might teach, another helps people in need, a third leads, a fourth evangelizes.

Likewise, in the successful church, the pastor is not the only person who engages the Scriptures in a regular and life-changing way. The janitor does too. So does the first-grade Sunday School teacher and the person serving coffee. People are not only told what the Bible says but are instructed to study it for themselves.

The Bible itself emphasizes this one-on-one kind of connection in the church. St. Paul, in one of his earliest letters, tells the Thessalonian church members to encourage and build each other up “one to one,” or as we would say, “one-on-one.” Paul is thinking small here, but he knows that the results will be big.

In another letter, the apostle is positively gleeful because in the church “the love of each and every one of you towards one another grows ever greater.” Such love is not primarily expressed at large group events but in one-on-one friendships.

St. Paul was a big picture thinker if ever there was one, yet he was regularly engaged in these one-on-one relationships. He can say that he encouraged church members like a father encourages a child, and that he did this with “each one of you.”

Churches often measure their success by how many people come to their large group events. A different metric would be more helpful: the percentage of people who are engaged in loving one-on-one friendships that encourage church members and build them up in the faith.

This would require a different way of thinking from the one that is ingrained in church leaders’ minds by their education and denominational culture. We have all heard the story of the shepherd who left ninety-nine sheep to go and search for the one sheep that is lost. We naturally appropriately see in it a picture of Jesus, yet we fail to apply its lesson to our ecclesial practices.

But we should. These one-on-one relationships are part of the church’s critical infrastructure. If they deteriorate or are absent, the resulting structural damage will place future growth at risk and may even lead to a catastrophic collapse.

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