Previous Pastor's Corners are archived here
March 14, 2010
A friend of mine from college expressed frustration recently about controversy in the church carried too far. The subject was the inerrancy of the Bible. There was a great deal of this back in the 1980's, but for most Christians it has passed. It now divides what we call moderate and conservative Christians. I believe that it has pulled the teeth from the preaching of the moderates because they cannot speak with the authority that Jesus and the church have been renowned for generations for. Yet it has also been expanded in a way that it was never meant to be. This is the frustration that my friend wrote about. My response is the balance that I have sought over the years.
Sometimes I think that we need to ignore the controversy and just be givers of radical grace, that is controversy enough for me. The pendulum always swings and man will always write the latest type and version of the Talmud, adding to God's Word, as if God is not able to speak for Himself. I prefer the plumb-bob to the pendulum and I try to keep it centered over the heart of Christ and His redemption- the essence of the gospel.
Perhaps we should simply seek "plumb-bob faith."
January 24, 2010
The Rug Pulled Out
It has happened to all of us. We are happily going about our life's business, all of our plans going smoothly, and then with a sound like an earthquake, the rug gets pulled right out from under us. Now when this happens in life we think of things like divorce, the realization that a child is not who we thought he/she was and is involved in a terrible relationship or drugs. It is affairs, alcoholism, and all kinds of life’s mayhem coming from quarters that are simply not expected. We always see this as a negative thing, but it is not always negative.
You see sometimes it is truth that pulls the rug out from under our perceptions. Jesus was the Master of many things, but his communicating of "rug pulling" truth may have been His greatest skill.
Matthew 5:43-48 (HCSB)
43 “You have heard that it was said, Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
45 so that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. For He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
46 For if you love those who love you, what reward will you have? Don’t even the tax collectors do the same?
47 And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing out of the ordinary? Don’t even the Gentiles do the same?
48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Love must be radical and far outside our comfort. Just as then, today men work constantly to make the words "Love your Neighbor" more comfortable while Jesus works to pull the rug out from under us.
December 9, 2009
In 2002 during our lone Sunday in the city of Trivandrum in the State of Kerala in South India, my family and team worshipped with a Church of South India congregation. We did not know the language as they spoke and sang in their native Malayalam, but worship is beyond language and so that did not matter. Afterward we were introduced to the pastor. At the time I assumed that the church was actually an Anglican Church because of the history of England in relation to India. It turns out that I was wrong. Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of the man who was God's instrument in founding the Church of South India. Bishop Lesslie Newbigin brought together several denominations, including Baptists, Presbyterians and Anglicans at the time of India's independence so that Christians could show a different face than the squabbling Muslims and Hindus showed to one another and to the world. He helped the Christians become strong in the region where the apostle Thomas brought the gospel of Jesus Christ in the first century and millions know Christ today, in part, because of his witness.
Yet, his greatest contribution and challenge have been to he church in the West and came after he turned 66 years of age. He wrote a number of books concerning the state of the church in Europe and now in the USA that were instrumental in reshaping people's hearts and minds. More importantly, his legacy is one of prophetically calling the church to again become missional. As he returned from "the mission field"m to his native England he recognized a need to reach again his own people with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
May we honor his birthday today by renewing our personal commitment to getting back to the business of reaching people with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
November 2009
I quote here from the Manhattan Declaration and affirm my personal agreement with the statements made. In the words of our founders, "These are the times that try men's souls." It is time to take a stand and to make known to those in power that we will not be moved.
"In recent decades a growing body of case law has paralleled the decline in respect for religious values in the media, the academy and political leadership, resulting in restrictions on the free exercise of religion. We view this as an ominous development, not only because of its threat to the individual liberty guaranteed to every person, regardless of his or her faith, but because the trend also threatens the common welfare and the culture of freedom on which our system of republican government is founded. Restrictions on the freedom of conscience or the ability to hire people of one’s own faith or conscientious moral convictions for religious institutions, for example, undermines the viability of the intermediate structures of society, the essential buffer against the overweening authority of the state, resulting in the soft despotism Tocqueville so prophetically warned of. 1 Disintegration of civil society is a prelude to tyranny.
As Christians, we take seriously the Biblical admonition to respect and obey those in authority. We believe in law and in the rule of law. We recognize the duty to comply with laws whether we happen to like them or not, unless the laws are gravely unjust or require those subject to them to do something unjust or otherwise immoral. The biblical purpose of law is to preserve order and serve justice and the common good; yet laws that are unjust—and especially laws that purport to compel citizens to do what is unjust—undermine the common good, rather than serve it. Going back to the earliest days of the church, Christians have refused to compromise their proclamation of the gospel. In Acts 4, Peter and John were ordered to stop preaching. Their answer was, “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.” Through the centuries, Christianity has taught that civil disobedience is not only permitted, but sometimes required. There is no more eloquent defense of the rights and duties of religious conscience than the one offered by Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Writing from an explicitly Christian perspective, and citing Christian writers such as Augustine and Aquinas, King taught that just laws elevate and ennoble human beings because they are rooted in the moral law whose ultimate source is God Himself. Unjust laws degrade human beings. Inasmuch as they can claim no authority beyond sheer human will, they lack any power to bind in conscience. King’s willingness to go to jail, rather than comply with legal injustice, was exemplary and inspiring. Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryodestructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other antilife act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family.
We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s."
