Month: October 2020

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON POLITICAL UPHEAVAL

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON POLITICAL UPHEAVAL

Just for fun, and to provide a little perspective on our present political perturbations, see if any of this sounds familiar. The answer or speaker in each paragraph corresponds to the same number at the bottom of the page.

1. “A burden of doubt had been cast over” the press. When the wrong man won, reporters and editors said they had been deluded, “not just by the polls, but by the politicians in both parties. Everybody should have known better.”

2. The FBI illegally assisted a presidential campaign. In the expectation that he would be named attorney general when his candidate won, the director of the FBI, who was friends with the candidate, put the Bureau’s resources at the candidate’s disposal months before the election.

3. The candidate believed campaign victory was destiny.

4. The two candidates have vastly different campaign strategies. The incumbent, whom many despise and most expect to lose, is on the road to large and small cities. Huge crowds stand in line for hours to hear him speak and shower love on him when he does. His opponent, happy to run on widespread hatred of his opponent and assured of victory by the polls and pundits, ventures out very little and makes few commitments about what he will do once elected.

5. “You can understand what the president has to stand. Every day in the week, he’s under a constant barrage from people who have no respect for the truth, and whose objective is to belittle and discredit him.”

6. On hatred and calls for the impeachment of the president over a controversial decision: “People signed petitions and fired off furious messages to Washington.” In Worchester, Massachusetts, and San Gabriel, California, the president was burned in effigy.  In Houston, a protestant minister became so angry while composing his message to the White House that he died of a heart attack.[1]

1. Henry Luce, the founding editor of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated magazines, referring to Harry Truman’s victory in 1948.

2. Assistant to J. Edgar Hoover, William Sullivan. “We tried to create the impression that the president was too ignorant to deal with the emerging communist threat. We even prepared studies for Dewey, which were released under his name, making it appear as if his staff had done the work. No one in the Bureau gave Truman any chance of winning.”[2]

3. “It was written in the stars,” said Thomas E. Dewey. He was the first Republican to use statistical polling in a national election. The polls showed him winning.

4. President Harry S. Truman, Democrat v. Thomas E. Dewey, Republican, in the 1948 election. Truman toured the country in his private rail car, The Ferdinand Magellan, speaking to hundreds of thousands along the way. Dewey stayed mostly in New York.

5. Harry Truman, in a letter to Owen Latimore’s sister. Latimore was a China scholar, accused by Joseph McCarthy of being  “the top Russian espionage agent in the United States.”[2]

6.  The reaction after President Truman sacked General Douglas MacArthur for insubordination.  

Reading presidential biographies (Audible is great for this) provides an excellent perspective in times like these. Here’s a summary of what I’ve learned from George Washington to George H.W. Bush with a little Churchill and Tony Blair on the side.

Trust God. 7 It is God who judges:

He brings one down, he exalts another. [3]

Don’t panic. Our country has seen worse times and corrected greater wrongs. Does anyone remember 1861? Did you know that Franklin Roosevelt was the first to attempt to pack the Supreme Court? His Democrat majority stopped him.

Be sober about the biases in the media. They’ve been misrepresenting the facts and pushing an agenda for a long time. Develop discernment by reading good biographies and history, not the halo-biographies written by cheerleaders. Get your reporting from people committed to finding all the facts, not just the ones that support their side. That’s why I keep recommending World News Group’s podcast, The World and Everything In It. They are committed to reporting “sensational facts with understated prose” from a biblical worldview perspective. More importantly, they are transparent about their point of view.

Participate intelligently. Consider carefully the people advising a candidate. They have far more influence on a president Trump or Biden than most of us imagine.  

Hope in Christ alone. The Kingdom of God does not arrive on Air Force One.

[1] McCullough, ch. 16, Commander in Chief. Audible book.

[2] TRUMAN, David McCullough, ch. 14 Fighting Chance. Audible Books

[3] The New International Version. (2011). (Ps 75:7). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

VELVET COVERED TYRANNY The Virginia Values Act

VELVET COVERED TYRANNY The Virginia Values Act

Stacy & Lynn (pseudonyms) visited our church for a few weeks in 2003. The two young women had hardened faces, ‘butch’ haircuts, and dressed like men. Lynn walked with a noticeable limp, like something congenital. It was evident to me (it’s a pastor thing, I can’t explain it) that both women were in deep emotional pain. They asked to meet with me. Sensing what this might be about, I asked two of our elders to join us.

Both women told incredibly sad stories of abuse, sexual and otherwise, from fathers, ex-husbands, and relatives. They asked me to officiate a wedding for them.

The elders and I carefully and gently explained the gospel. We explained God’s plan for marriage from the Gospels. We welcomed them to worship with us at any time. I explained that we often try to get our needs met and our injuries healed in sinful ways, that the path to healing begins with repentance and walking with Jesus.

When I finished, Lynn said, “So, will you perform a ceremony for us?”  

“No, I can’t, I’m sorry. It would be wrong.” I said.

“Ok. Well, we’ll be going now.”

I want to say that Lynn and Stacy gave their lives to Jesus that day. But they didn’t. They did have an encounter with gentle, respectful, loving men who were free to share the gospel of repentance and faith in Jesus’ name with them. We planted the seed, and I believe it will yet bear fruit.

I told that story in June 2004, in a sermon based on Matthew 19:1-6 on the gospel and public policy. I concluded by saying, “If same-sex marriage becomes the law of the land, what we shared that day may well become illegal and punishable by law.”

In Virginia, that day has come. The Virginia Values Act became law on July 1. According to Alliance Defending Freedom, the law “poses severe threats to churches, Christian schools, and other religious ministries that operate consistently with their beliefs on marriage and human sexuality. Under the law, they face a choice: abandon their biblical beliefs or face investigations, lawsuits, fines of up to $100,000 per violation, unlimited legal fees, and court orders forcing them to violate their convictions.” 

The law also “prevents religious schools from limiting admittance to those students and families who share their religious beliefs. And ministries that offer sex-specific accommodations—such as an overnight women’s shelter—must allow males who identify as women access to female-only areas.”

Further, the law makes it illegal for any pastor or church to explain our beliefs even on our website. For example, under current Virginia law, my essay, I’M NOT GAY AND YOU PROBABLY AREN’T EITHER, written to help young men with same-sex attraction sort through their confusion and find God’s best path, is now illegal.

LGBTQ and same-sex marriage advocates argue that we are just trying to force our religion on everyone else. So, as an evangelical pastor, I want to make something clear. Bad things have come from the malpractice of Biblical Christianity in this country. Christians mistreated some people with same-sex attraction. In large part due to the outcry of people in the LGBTQ community, many of us who consider ourselves to be Biblical Christians have become aware of this. We have had some “come to Jesus moments” about how we treat homosexual people. I am glad that they spoke out, and I apologize for the pain we have caused. Many Christians are now attempting to build bridges of understanding to the LGBTQ community. We will never fully agree on everything, but we agree that belittling and bullying one another isn’t helpful.

But none of that negates the fact that same-sex marriage is not only contrary to God’s design but also and unsurprisingly, bad for civilization. The landmark study on this topic by Sociologist Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas, Austin, titled, The New Family Structure Study (NFSS), was praised for its rigorous adherence to the scientific method and its sampling size.

A summary of its key findings:

Compared with offspring from married, intact mother/father homes, children raised in same-sex homes are markedly more likely to:

  • Experience poor educational attainment
  • Report overall lower levels of happiness, mental and physical health.
  • Have impulsive behavior
  • Be in counseling or mental health therapy (2xs)
  • Suffer from depression (by large margins)
  • Have recently thought of suicide (significantly)
  • Identify as bisexual, lesbian, or gay
  • Have male on male or female on female sex partners (dramatically higher)
  • Currently, be in a same-sex romantic relationship (2x to 3x more likely) 
  • Be asexual (females with lesbian parents)
  • As adults, be unmarried; much more likely to cohabit
  • As adults, more likely to be unfaithful in married or cohabiting relationships
  • Have a sexually transmitted infection (STI)
  • Be sexually molested (both inappropriate touching and forced sexual act)
  • Feel relationally isolated from bio-mother and -father (Although lesbian-parented children do feel close to their bio-mom – not surprisingly – they are not as close as children with a bio-mom married to father)
  • Be unemployed or part-time employed as young adults
  • As adults, currently, be on public assistance or sometime in their childhood
  • Live in homes with lower income levels
  • Drink to get drunk
  • To smoke tobacco and marijuana
  • Spend more time watching TV
  • Have frequency of arrests
  • Have pled guilty to minor legal offense

With this law, Governor Northam and his allies are usurping Virginians’ Constitutional rights with earnest talk of equal housing and anti-discrimination. But the governor and the LGBTQ lobby know that isn’t happening. They’ve already won the cultural battle. Now they are seeking to punish people—specifically religious people—who disagree with them. The Virginia Values Act is nothing less than velvet-covered tyranny.   

The good news is that the law is unconstitutional on several levels. ADF, on behalf of Calvary Road Baptist Church, Community Fellowship Church, Community Christian Academy, and Care Net filed a preemptive suit challenging the law. Hopefully, this will work out in the courts.

But that lawsuit would not be necessary if Virginia’s Christians had been paying attention and voting their values in the 2017 election. Our negligence gave us a one-party rule, and the Virginia Values Acts is one of many bad results. Our local delegate, James Edmunds, said, “They have undone in one session what took us twenty years to build.”  Too many stayed home. I hope that doesn’t happen this go around.  

THE PARABLE OF VANNA WHITE

THE PARABLE OF VANNA WHITE


Vanna White needed a new transmission. I guess I should explain that.

Tradesmen often name their trucks. The maintenance crew I worked with in the early nineties was no different. The ancient, white Ford Econoline 150 panel van that the carpenters used was so reliable, doing the same simple tasks day after day, well past her prime, that they called her Vanna White. Only now her transmission was slipping. It was time for a rebuild.

I put her on the lift, removed the big automatic tranny, dismantled it, cleaned it out, installed a rebuild kit in the case, and hoisted it back into place; a six or seven hour job. Then I filled it with transmission fluid and took it for a drive. It slipped, right between first and second gear.

So I did it again, looking carefully for mistakes, and it slipped again. So I did it again. And again. And again. And again. It kept slipping! I was ready to drive it off a cliff!

Now let’s pause this parable and ask a question: Is there some part of your spiritual life that isn’t working? Are you continually disabled by a slip into sin whose source is invisible to you? Have you gone over the details again and again, tried as hard as you can to solve your problem, and failed?

Good. Coming to the end of our resources is the best place we can be because only then are we ready to receive the power to overcome the “sins that so easily entangle us.” The Apostle Paul explained it as the difference between living in the “flesh,” translated “sinful nature” in the NIV, versus living in the “Spirit.” (See Galatians 5:16-25). Jesus spoke similarly in John 6:63 when he said, “The flesh counts for nothing. The Spirit gives life.”

Everything about us, our bodies, our minds, our emotions, and personalities were permanently weakened by the power of sin. We “slip between first and second.” Until the day we die that power will remain. In fact the only way to conquer the power of sin is through death. 

That is the beautiful thing about the gospel. In Christ we did die, not a physical death, but a spiritual one. We died with him to the power of sin. When the Holy Spirit baptizes us into Christ his death and his resurrection become ours in spiritual fact (See Romans 6). The trick is to learn how to live in the power of those things.

Remember Vanna White? The sixth time I pulled the transmission from the old van I remembered another Ford E 150 in our fleet. The engine had died and we junked it, but not before harvesting all other usable parts, one of which was the transmission. Automatic transmission casings are cast with hydraulic control circuits inside. If the case cracks in the right place, a place invisible to the naked eye, those circuits will leak under pressure and the transmission will slip. I pulled the new parts out of Vanna White’s original transmission case and installed them in the one from the van that had “died” and Viola! No more slipping between gears!

The problem most of us face in overcoming sin is that we try to stuff new parts into our old life. We need new parts in a new life. By the power of the Holy Spirit within us we can overcome by exchanging our life with Christ’s.  Only when we have given up on trying to improve ourselves by our own will power are we able to begin operating in the power of the Spirit. Only when we have exchanged Christ’s life for ours are we able to know his power to overcome.