A Good Example for the Rest

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Abortion

Let the history books record that we didn’t all sit by silently while the pro-abortion movement carried out their long and deadly pogrom.  I dare say most of us could do far more to fight this evil, but decrying the wickedness is a start.

I speak, of course, of the laudable recent actions of the Oklahoma state legislature.  They have a couple of bills in the works right now; one, as I understand it, would revoke the medical licenses of doctors who perform abortions, and the other, which goes even further in the right direction, would establish abortion as murder.

The latter effort, of course, is more correct; loss of medical license is far too little punishment for the abortionist’s murderous deeds.  But I’m enough of a pragmatist to settle for the former measure – far more important to put a halt to the killings than to bring the killers to justice.

Sadly, the typical analysis I’ve seen is that neither bill has much chance of being effective, since they almost certainly will be struck down by the supreme court.  It is the price we pay for allowing our nation to be shackled with an over-powerful judiciary; there’s very little a noble state government can do when the judges of four decades have somehow found killing babies to be a mother’s right.

But let us not think that protest is worthless, just because the mighty strike it down.  In a free society, men and women and local and state governments ought to do what they can against injustice.  We will not condone this evil, we will call it out for what it is – and who knows, someday we may win.

But win or lose, this kingdom is on the way out.  We must endure – and fight – the kingdom of death only for a moment.  The future belongs to life.

Another King is coming.

Hope and Humility

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Day of the Lord, Malachi

The very last chapter of the Old Testament touches on a theme that has been recurrent in the prophets, the Day of the Lord.  We are reminded that history is indeed linear–in a moral sense–however circular it may seem.  Things will not wind on forever as they have; God has already acted cataclysmically in the history of the human race to break the grip of sin and death, and He will act again not only cataclysmically but with finality.

Days come and go, and the wicked prosper.  Terrorists kill innocent people; callous industrialists pollute the Earth; abortionists murder babies in the womb; the wealthy cling to their treasures and leave the poor to starve; governments draft unjust laws, and courts pass unjust rulings.  Days come and go–but not forever.

” ‘Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace.  All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and that day that is coming will set them on fire,’ says the Lord Almighty.  ‘Not a root or a branch will be left to them.  But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings.  And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall.  Then you will trample down the wicked; they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I do these things,’ says the Lord Almighty.”

-Malachi 4:1-3

The Day of the Lord will come, and all the wicked patterns of this world will be ended, and the wicked persons judged.  No pattern of human time is so firmly entrenched that it can withstand the shattering judgment of the Lord Almighty.

So we have hope, in the face of the persistence of evil.  It will not endure; our God will end it and make all things right.  And the power that enables the wicked to work their will in human time will not protect them on the Day of the Lord.  Be warned, kings and queens of the Earth.

But in the face of our triumphalism, this word of the Lord also demands from us humility.  Those who have crossed from death into life have done so only by the grace of God.  Those who will be spared the judgment of that day are not spared because of their righteousness but because of belonging to the Righteous One.

There but for the grace of God, dear ones.  And some among those who lead in wickedness now will yet see the light, and rejoice in the rising of the sun of righteousness.

Pontoon!

Well, it has been a whirlwind lately.  We’ve moved down to Pontoon Beach, IL, where I’ve been called to pastor Pontoon Baptist Church.

We’re excited to see what God’s going to do in this new stage of our life and ministry!

A Passion for Futility

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Malachi, Wrath

My last entry commended a certain sort of defiance.  A Scripture passage today provides a perfect counterpoint, a reminder that some attitudes are virtues or vices depending on the case and whom they are directed towards.

Defying Caesar because he compels you to go against Christ is an obligatory defiance.  Defying God is deplorable obstinacy, and utterly foolish to boot.  God speaks through the prophet Malachi about his wrath upon Edom.  He underlines the falseness of any hope in the face of His wrath:

“Edom may say, ‘Though we have been crushed, we will rebuild the ruins.’

But this is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘They may build, but I will demolish.  They will be called the Wicked Land, a people always under the wrath of the LORD.'”

-Malachi 1:4

Defying God is the basic attitude of sin.  Not only is it morally reprehensible, but such defiance shows how little we know the power of God, that no effort of ours will succeed without His consent.  Only a passion for futility can sensibly motivate persistent rebellion towards the Almighty.

Good and Necessary Defiance

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Same-Sex Marriage

It seems like it took no time at all after the advocates of same-sex marriage gained legitimization for them to go on the attack against people who believed differently.  To any who doubted, it should now be clear that the agenda reaches beyond the legal right to marry, reaches to the mandate for approval.  Those who are in any way involved in celebrating marriages–excepting the church, which for the moment maintains its right to dissent–must celebrate same-sex marriages.  Refuse, and you face the awful persuasive force of the argument ad baculum.

An incident most recently come to my attention is the case of a Christian couple in my native Illinois who refused to rent their bed and breakfast to celebrate a same-sex union.  From the news story, it looks like they made themselves particularly odious to the prospective renters, by daring to make their religious views explicit through the exercise of free speech.  Such things (‘intolerance’, the cultural gurus would say), apparently, must not be tolerated.

The judge in the case has ruled that this exercise of freedoms Americans have enjoyed since the founding of our nation merits an $80,000 penalty.  Dear judge, you will one day stand before a Judge who understands true justice and is not moved by the vagaries of shifting post-modern mores; what will you say then?

But the encouraging note in this grim news story is expressed in the title, that the couple being persecuted here remain “defiant” in the face of this ruling against them.  Defiance is perhaps not the typically advised Christian attitude, and in a case like this I would have used a more unequivocally positive term (“Faithful” comes to mind), but there is a place for defiance.  When the government puts its clout behind the sexual revolution and says, “celebrate or suffer the consequences”, defiance is appropriate.

As far as I can tell, the battle isn’t over.  It will take some more definitive court rulings before we see whether Christian businesses will be permitted to operate with freedom of conscience or whether we must vacate certain industries or run the risk of persecution.  Until then, and in whatever analogous cases may come, we should heed this example of a good and necessary defiance–a defiance that refuses to bow to Caesar because of devotion to Christ.

Jesus is Lord.

 

 

Strong in Him

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God, Omnipotence, Zechariah

Zechariah 12 begins with a beautiful passage prophesying the invincibility God will give to His people in His chosen day.  The images come in succession: a cup of wine to afflict the wicked nations with drunkenness, an adamant rock against which the enemies of God smash themselves, panic and blindness upon the armies that oppose God.

The prophecy turns to the strength of God’s people, and the source of this invulnerability is proclaimed in v.5:

“Then the leaders of Judah will say in their hearts, ‘The people of Jerusalem are strong, because the Lord Almighty is their God.'”

Though the prophecy has a particularity to it, the statement is true at all times.  The strength of God’s people comes from God, and by His covenant of love with them.  When we seem weak, outnumbered, and besieged from every side, there is no cause for fear.  When we lose power and privilege in society, there is no cause for panic.  The Lord Almighty is our God.

He is strong.

We are strong in Him.