Category: American Dream

MAX ANDERS: Biblical Clarity on the Current Crisis

MAX ANDERS: Biblical Clarity on the Current Crisis

Every pastor needs a few brilliant friends and advisers. Max Anders is one of mine. He is the author of over 25 books, including the bestselling 30 Days to Understanding the Bible, and his most recent work, Brave New Discipleship. He is also the creator and general editor of the 32 volume Holman Bible Commentary. His September 8 blog, AN HISTORIC OPPORTUNITY FOR CHRISTIANS IN AMERICA, caught my attention because I’ve never seen Max write on politics.

“To one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.” James 4:17

AN HISTORIC OPPORTUNITY FOR CHRISTIANS IN AMERICA

By Max Anders

This blog post is a little long, but it’s very important, and I hope you will read through to the end.

The cultural and political upheaval we are currently experiencing in our nation is not an accident.  It is not a spontaneous uprising by sincere Americans who only want to bring about more “just” treatment for blacks by police. That may have been the motivation of some when it all started, but it has gone way beyond that now.

This is a full-throated uprising against American democracy and rule by law.  It is a premeditated campaign that is satanic and demonic in origin, infecting willing human servants (socialists and Marxists).

Spiritual/political attack on America

The uprising is now being carried out by those intent on destroying our American way of government and life.  They want to replace it with socialism/Marxism, which is violently anti-Christian and which has failed spectacularly everywhere it has ever been tried (Russia, China, Cambodia, Cuba, Venezuela).

Why in the world are people championing something that so clearly doesn’t work?  Well, Scripture tells us that Satan has the ability to deceive and blind the minds of unbelievers (2 Corinthians 4:4), causing them to be unable to come to a knowledge of the truth (2 Timothy 2:24-26), generating wisdom that is earthly, natural and demonic, producing disorder and every evil thing (James 3:14-16).  Their blindness is spiritual blindness, a consequence of spiritual warfare.

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s non-violent civil rights movement was governed by biblical/Christian principles and was historically effective. Two organizations, Black Lives Matter and Antifa, that are highly visible in recent riots, use violence to further their agendas and are deeply anti-Christian and anti-American.

It is helpful to understand that most riots have three types of people involved:

  1. Peaceful protestors who gathered legally with no intent to riot.
  2. Thugs and criminals who simply want to loot and destroy.
  3. Committed Marxists and Antifa members who organize and energize riots.

Mainstream Democrats do not necessarily agree with far-left socialists, but they have joined forces with them because they cannot get elected without them, and they are willing to pay nearly any price to defeat President Trump. As a result, the Democrats have been pushed so far to the left during campaigning that they have made promises they will have to keep. They are feeding the beast that will destroy them.

Where did this upheaval come from?

One might be excused for thinking that this has all come about suddenly.  But such is not the case.  Things have been deteriorating below the radar for decades, and just now have gotten to the point that they have broken out into the open.

In the 19th century, Karl Marx tried to conquer England with Marxism in his lifetime, but it didn’t work.  Author and freelance columnist Larry Taunton explained that the church was too strong, had too much cultural influence.

Later, Italian Antonio Gramsci concluded that for Marxism to succeed, a culture must first be softened up from within.

“Socialism will triumph,” he wrote, “by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.”

Socialism/Cultural Marxism is a Trojan Horse designed to:

  1. Subvert families, traditional morality, and the symbols of national identity.
  2. Infiltrate educational institutions, the church and the legal system.
  3. Watch the country fall like a ripe fruit.

To accomplish this, Saul Alinsky wrote the Marxist playbook, Rules for Radicals, which Larry Taunton summarized here:

  1. Divide and conquer: drive wedges between as many different groups as you can (rich/poor, black/white, conservative/liberal, laborers/professionals, etc.)
  2. Create scapegoats: Your problems are never your fault.  They are someone else’s fault.
  3. Create chaos: Riots, strikes, controversies (kneeling during anthem, etc.).
  4. Trash talk: Use outrageous language, verbally bully others.
  5. Spread disinformation: Tell strategic lies, repeat incessantly, accuse the other side of what you are doing.
  6. Exploit morality: Use others’ moral principles against them. Attack them when they try to be reasonable and gracious.  Use their morals as a weapon against them.  Do to them things they would never do to you because of their moral standards.
  7. Ridicule/attack common values: religion, patriotism, traditional values.

The playbook is working spectacularly well in the United States.  Our schools have been infiltrated (with Marxism openly taught in our universities for decades), our churches have been infiltrated, and our legal system has been infiltrated with Marxist values and sympathizers, and we are well on the way to Gramsci’s goal of softening us up so that we fall, like a ripe fruit, into the hands of Marxists.

Among other things, this is how we are seeing this worked out:

  1. Identity politics in which individual minority groups promote self-interest rather than the interest of the whole (Divide and conquer).
  2. The assertion that the problems of all minorities are the fault of white privilege and racism (Create scapegoats).
  3. Riots and destruction in cities (Create chaos).
  4. False charges and accusing others of the same thing you are doing (Trash talk).
  5. The rise of opinion journalism and fake news (Spread disinformation).
  6. Rioting in streets, destroying family businesses, patrolling suburbs (exploit morality).
  7. Destruction of statues, memorials, Marxist Black Lives Matter rallies (Ridicule/attack common values).

If this movement is successful, it will change America as we have known it.

What should the Christian response be?

Christians must rise up to stop this godless assault on our country and the church.  There are so many of us that we can do it. We have the votes. All we have to do is act… and vote our values.  Not to do so is to bring on our nation, and on the church, calamities I have listed here.

There are some Christians who are too unaware to get involved.  They are not naturally interested in political things, and they spend their lives occupied with “spiritual” things, assuming that everything is going to work out fine. I’m not criticizing these Christians. I used to be one of them. I just didn’t fully realize what was going on. Plus, more is going on now than ever before.

There are other Christians who think they shouldn’t get involved. In one article I read, a pastor said one reason he did not get involved is that “God is in control.”  He said he is working for the heavenly kingdom and doesn’t want to get distracted by the earthly kingdom.

But how would that perspective play itself out in other areas of life if lived consistently?

  • If someone broke into your house to harm you and your family, would you stand by idly and say, “God is in control?”
  • Would you turn the other cheek for the malicious intruder?
  • Would you let the invader have his way and say, “God causes all things to work together for good?”

Of course not! You’d try to protect those God has given you!

I see this as the same situation. Evil people are breaking into our national home. How can we, who have the ability to stop them, not stop them? Even Jesus said, “When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are undisturbed” (Luke 11:21).  There are so many evangelical Christians that if we would simply “guard our house,” we could avert disaster.

More than America is at stake

This is not just about our comfort and safety. It is about having the knowledge, technology, and money to…

  • finish Bible translations around the world,
  • help start churches in emerging nations,
  • help advance the gospel around the world,
  • help reduce the pain of poverty,
  • help bring medical supplies and advances to those who need them,
  • help reduce the profound discrimination and suffering of Christians around the world.

Never before in the history of the Church has there been so much potential to take the Great Commission to the entire planet. There is a world of good to be done, but if the U.S. falls to socialism, it will deal a grave blow to all that potential.

James 4:17 says, “To one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.” My goal in writing this blog post is to help convince you that to vote Christian values for the sake of stopping anti-Christian socialism is the right thing to do.

As I see it, the choice is very clear: Christians must vote, and we must vote Republican if we do not want the United States to be overtaken by socialism/Marxism.  The traditional understanding of Republicans and Democrats is out the window in this election because Democrats have sold out to socialism. Today’s Democrat Party is not the same party of yester-years. If you vote Democrat because you or your family has “always voted” Democrat, please understand that today’s Democrat Party is not your parents’ party and please take the time to investigate their platform and policies before casting your vote. If you don’t want socialism, you don’t want a Democrat party platform.

It is a stewardship responsibility.  How can we neglect this gift the Lord has given us?  We have the power – God has given us the power through prayer and the privilege of informed voting – to prevent this calamity. We should be praying! But if we pray without also exercising our responsibility of voting, we have only done half the job. 

This is an historic moment for Christians in America. Help keep the Church in America strong so that we can use our knowledge, technology, and money to energize the Great Commission on a level we have never seen before.

Let’s rise to the challenge! Let’s pray and vote!

Max Anders is a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary, and has taught on the college and seminary level. He was an original team member with Walk Thru the Bible Ministries and the author of over twenty-five books. He has pastored small, medium and large churches spanning over 25 years, including currently serving as Senior Pastor at Geist Chapel in Indianapolis, IN.

THIS IS OUR TIME

THIS IS OUR TIME

In J. R. R. Tolkien’s epic trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, hobbit hero Frodo Baggins carries a ring of great power and evil, a ring that he and he alone can destroy in the fires of Mount Doom. Depressed by the burden he carries and the evil times, he confides to his wizard friend, Gandalf:

Frodo: I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.

Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring. In which case, you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.

Tolkien was a veteran of WWI that killed 20 million and wounded 21 million, as well as the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic that killed 50 million worldwide, as well as the Great Depression, and the polio epidemic that paralyzed tens of thousands. He knew a thing or two about bad times and wove what he knew about how to endure them into his stories.

The Lord of the Rings is full of perseverance and faith against all the odds.

In August of 1940, 25-30 divisions of crack Wehrmacht infantry (over 300,000 soldiers) stood poised along the coast of France. They were waiting for Reich Marshal Herman Goering’s vaunted Luftwaffe to wipe the Royal Air Force from the sky and open the English Channel for Operation Sea Lion, the invasion of Great Britain, to launch. The Germans had a three-to-one advantage in warplanes when the Battle of Britain began that July and had subdued all Western Europe in less than a year. Everyone expected them to win. Everyone that is, except Winston Churchill and the millions of British who believed him when he said, “We shall never surrender!” Londoner’s sheltered in basements, bunkers, and the subway, as the Blitz rained bombs on their city. Nazi planes indiscriminately wrecked churches, hospitals, and businesses destroyed 60% of London’s homes, wounded 87,000, and killed 32,000 people. Victims overwhelmed the hospitals, and no one knew who would “get it” next.

But by the end of October, Hitler was withdrawing his invasion force from the French coast, and canceling Operation Sea Lion.

The story of Great Britain’s ultimate victory overflows with perseverance and faith.

I take great courage from these stories of our collective past because the ultimate source of their strength was the same hope we share in a good God. He loves us no less than our ancestors and, if we ask him, will give us the strength and bravery to “keep calm and carry on,” as Londoners’ did during the Blitz, and as all God’s people are called to do in a crisis.

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” James 1:2-4.

Every generation faces tests. The Corona virus is our time to meet the fury of a fallen planet with faith and perseverance.

So, look out for your loved ones. Ignore the fear mongers. Follow the instructions of our healthcare professionals. Trust God. “Keep calm and carry on.”  And if you haven’t seen it yet, it’s a great time to watch The Lord of the Rings

CREATED EQUAL Is a Great Story

CREATED EQUAL Is a Great Story

“Eah ya got ‘nud jah?” the sweaty, African American man said as he handed back the glass Mom had given him.

“Whut,”? I asked.

“Eah ya got ‘nud jah?”

“Momma, I cain’t unnerstan this man. Whuts he wont?”

“He wants more water, honey. It’s awfully hot outside. Here, give me the glass.” She refilled it and handed it back to the man who walked into our backyard every week, dumped our garbage cans into his large metal one, slung it on his shoulder, and hauled it back to the county truck at our curb.

I was about eight years old, and the only black men I met were the ones that collected the trash or trimmed the hedge across the street from my grandma’s house. I had no idea of the life these men led or of the events swirling through our country in 1968. But the Civil Rights movement was about to make itself known in powerfully negative terms in my small southern world. By the time I reached eighth grade in DeKalb County, just outside Atlanta, racial gang fights were regular events. And dodging them was an art form for this pudgy 13-year-old.

I did not understand the roots of the anger in my black classmates. All I knew was I felt like I was paying for something I hadn’t done and over which I had no control, and I was angry. Little did I know that they felt the same way. And as a people, they’d had enough of it.

About the same time that I was waking up to racism, future Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was coming to terms with his anger about the injustice. In the new documentary, Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words, we learn how this coastal Georgia, Gullah-Geechee speaking boy, grew up from poverty to become one of the youngest men ever appointed to the bench. And how the once-radical leftist became a bastion of conservative jurisprudence.

Schooled by his grandfather’s fierce work-ethic—“Old man Can’t is dead. I helped bury him,”—and Irish Catholic nuns sympathetic to racial oppression, Thomas was bound for the priesthood. But when Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, a white seminary classmate’s comment, “I hope he’s dead,” unleashed a fury in Thomas that drove him from the ministry and into the arms of campus Marxist revolutionaries in Boston. “I’m angry with my grandfather. I’m angry with the Church. If it’s a warm day, I’m angry. If it’s a cold day, I’m angry. I’m just angry. I’m angry. I’m sort of flying, lashing out at every single thing. Nothing is right.”

But a night of violence with campus radicals shook him to his core and drove him back to the Church where he asked God, “If you take anger out of my heart, I’ll never hate again. Anger and hate,” he says, “are just other forms of slavery. Other people are controlling you.”

He would need that resolve when leftist ideologues tried to torpedo his nomination with bogus sexual assault charges during confirmation hearings. “We know exactly what’s going on here. This is the wrong black guy. He has to be destroyed,” he says in the film. Thomas’s humanity, faith, and courage are reminiscent of Jacky Robinson’s in the movie 42 as he withstands without rancor the vicious assault on his character that he termed “a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks.” Watching his story unfold helped me better understand mine and strengthened me for the cultural battles we face today.

Black history month has come and gone, and the film is no longer playing in theaters. But it will be air on PBS in May, and no doubt be available soon on DVD and streaming services. In these culturally confusing, racially tense times, it goes down like a cold drink of water on a hot summer day.

PIVOTAL MOMENTS

PIVOTAL MOMENTS

Pivotal moments often arrive when we least expect them. An email in the inbox, a phone call in the evening and life reaches a cross-road. A new path emerges. Will we take it? Nothing will ever be the same if we do. And nothing will ever be the same if we don’t. We want to know, need to know, is it the right one? Is God in this? How can we tell? How do we know it’s him?

A man named Nathanael had a day like that. His story is in John 1:43 – 51, a text that always intrigues. Why did Nathanael react so profoundly to Jesus’ simple statement in verse 47-48? Why, when Jesus said, “I saw you under the fig tree …” did Nathanael make a pivotal declaration that would change his life forever?

“You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” (v. 49).

Most commentators focus on verse 51, linking it to Jacob’s ladder in Genesis 28, and of course they are right. But that still doesn’t answer the question. Verse 51 came after verse 49. So, what happened? How did Nathanael know it was Him?

The first clue is in verse 48.

“How do you know me?” he asked. This, in response to Jesus’ comment, “Behold! An Israelite in whom is no guile!” tells us that when Jesus made that observation, he pinged something deep in the man. He revealed that he knew something about Nathanael that only God could know because Nathanael had only discussed it with God.

The fig tree is the clincher. Up until that point Nathanael could speculate that Jesus was a perceptive observer of human nature. But the fig tree in Jewish life is a literal place with a figurative meaning. A man sitting quietly under his fig tree is a man sitting in a peaceful place meditating and sharing his innermost thoughts with his creator. We might compare it to our favorite chair or place of prayer when we think quiet thoughts with God.

Imagine the topic of Nathanael’s meditation that day. What could it have been to draw such a powerful response? Something along these lines perhaps: “God I will not hide my thoughts. Nothing is hidden from you anyway. You know my going out and my coming in. I will tell you what I think and ask you my questions. Teach me your way.”

Imagine then that Nathanael goes on to speak to God about his struggles. It could be some sin or temptation. It could be unbelief or concerns about his people. It could be issues with his wife or his family or his work. We don’t need to know the specifics to identify with his struggle. We only need to know that he was being transparent with God in that moment under his fig tree. He was telling God what he really thought, even though it might not have been something he would want to say out loud at church. “God, I’m telling you the real deal here. I’m not holding anything back, not pretending to be holy. I’m just telling you the truth about what’s happening in my soul.”

I bet you’ve had discussions like that with God. I know I have. Then you open the Bible and it speaks to you in a way it never has before, or a song comes on the Christian radio station, or a man or woman of God delivers a word that pings your soul and you know without doubt that God saw you under your own fig tree. You know without doubt that your pivotal moment has come. You will confess that he is “the Christ, the Son of the living God,” or you will not. Either way, you know it was Him and you know life will never be the same.

When that moment comes, don’t be afraid. Take the turn. Follow him. He knows you better than you know yourself and he will take you to places you never dreamed you could go.

STRAIGHT LINES WITH CROOKED STICKS An Evangelical Response to the State of the Union Speech

STRAIGHT LINES WITH CROOKED STICKS An Evangelical Response to the State of the Union Speech

Parents of young children need eight hands, I thought as the mom and dad juggled tiny baby, luggage, diaper bag, car-seat, boarding passes, and ID while shepherding their toddler through Phoenix Sky Harbor security. I wish they’d hurry up. Then the agent slowed things down even more by starting a conversation with the little guy.

“Is this your daddy? Uh huh. No, you don’t have to take off your shoes. Is this your mommy? Uh huh, you can hold your bear. Is that your baby sister?”

C’mon dude! Any idiot can see he’s their son! Stop harassing these people and let us in so we can all go home! If TSA agents could read minds I’d be in jail.

Then I remembered a recent news report: Human-trafficking is everywhere all the time and it is not all about sex. The Hispanic, and Romanian house-keepers in my hotels, the Moroccan Uber driver in Austin, the Russian donut shop clerk in Williamsburg, the Asian and Latino cooks who work seven-days-a-week in local restaurants. All might be in a form of slavery, working themselves to death to pay off enormous immigration debt to ruthless traffickers. Some surely are.[1]

Then there are the so-called “sex-workers”: Children, even infants, stolen, smuggled, sold into the sex trade to grow up—if they live that long—with no identity, no power, no voice, no skills and no hope. People who want to do immoral things often plan to do them on vacation. Susie Harville, who fights trafficking in Biloxi, Mississippi casino culture, told World Radio: “We had a person come down to the Mississippi Gulf Coast on a convention and um, while he was here he actually ordered a 12 year-old and a 16 year-old. One was a boy and one was a girl. What we found out was this Montana man was a deacon in his church, was married and had two children at home.”[2]

Twenty years after NAFTA—which George H. W. Bush negotiated and was ratified under Bill Clinton—killed our local textile economy, our still-struggling region is considering Casino gambling to create jobs. Really.[3]

My gut clinches in anger and grief at such stories. Doesn’t yours? But that’s not all. Scripture commands more than sympathy. “Welcome the stranger,” said Jesus. “Provide for the poor and the sojourner,” wrote Moses. Protect the immigrant, the fatherless, and the widow,” preached Jeremiah.[4]

All these ideas and one more simmered in my mind as I read the State of the Union Speech. (I no longer watch. The circus takes too long). God draws straight lines with crooked sticks. Trump the former casino owner advocates for a border solution that will choke entry points for traffickers. Who isn’t for that? Trump, who said “They have to go …” during the campaign argues for fair treatment of the dreamers while fixing our decades old immigration problems. Trump the thrice-married adulterer who has feasted on the fruits of the sexual revolution advocates for that revolution’s greatest victims—the unborn—because we are made “in the image of a holy God.”

Presidents “learn as they go” on the job, said the Arizona sheriff who called Trump’s campaign concrete wall idea a medieval solution to a 21st Century problem. “I support his current position.”[5]

Whether his policies indicate a shift in his personal morality—and I pray they do—is irrelevant. Franklin Roosevelt broke the law by providing covert support for Great Britain from 1936 to 1939 and died in the presence of his paramour in Georgia.[6] Serial adulterer John F. Kennedy[7] solved the Cuban missile crisis, preventing World War III. Rabid anti-communist “Tricky Dick” Nixon ended the Vietnam war and normalized relations with Red China, stifling communism and laying the foundation for global trade which brought billions of Chinese out of poverty and made Dollar General possible.

God draws straight lines with crooked sticks.

That’s why evangelicals like me voted for Donald Trump. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. We pray for his soul while we pull for his policies. If he succeeds in choking the flow of human trafficking and building a barrier wall against abortion, we will rejoice. Hillary Clinton would have done the opposite. It’s that simple.

I’ll try to remember that the next time TSA grills a toddler and Trump tries to privatize air traffic control, which I think is insane. Will you?

[1] https://worldandeverything.org/2019/01/listening-in-raleigh-sadler/

[2] https://worldandeverything.org/2019/02/protecting-children-on-the-gulf-coast-part-1/

[3] https://www.wsls.com/news/virginia/southside/a-casino-in-danville-it-could-happen

[4] Matthew 25:32-40; Leviticus 19:33-34; Jeremiah 7:5-7.

[5] https://worldandeverything.org/2019/01/washington-wednesday-border-security-2/

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Mercer_Rutherfurd

[7] https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/reliable-source/post/jfk-intern-mimi-alford-shares-story-of-her-affair-with-kennedy-in-new-book-relevant-historian-robert-dallek-says-yes/2012/02/06/gIQAFgF1uQ_blog.html?utm_term=.d3b02518f54c

MAN OF THE HOUSE C. R. Wiley’s interesting handbook for serious men

MAN OF THE HOUSE C. R. Wiley’s interesting handbook for serious men

John is a grizzled grey, mid-fifties motorcyclist who thinks most people have their heads in the sand about disaster preparedness. “My friends laugh at me, think I’m crazy,” he said, “but I’m like, ‘Dude, you buy life insurance, right? You buy health insurance. Why wouldn’t you buy a little disaster insurance by setting a few things aside and being prepared?’”

John has a “bug-out ranch” a few miles outside town fully equipped with food, water, fuel, and guns.

I met John in Austin, Texas, on assignment for a journalism course last January. We were doing post-hurricane Harvey “man on the street” interviews to see how prepared people were for disaster. The answer was, and I include my fellow motorcyclist in this, not very well.

That’s part of the reason C. R. Wiley’s Man of the House: a handbook for building a shelter that will last in a world that is falling apart, caught my eye. Guys like John—also known as “preppers”—are realists about the potential disasters we face but are mostly thinking about themselves.

Wiley is not a prepper in the strict sense. He isn’t writing about how to stock your bug-out bunker with enough food and ammo to survive a sudden catastrophe but a long slow one. And not just for yourself, but for your children and grandchildren. “I am convinced,” he writes, “that the world as we know it is like a drunk that just won’t hit bottom. When things get bad, it sobers up a little and promises to change its ways—then when things get a little better it’s back to binge-drinking again. But there will come a day when we find the old boy comatose and gone for good. If we work at preparing for that day, we may find that we are more relieved than saddened by the end.”[1]

Man of the House picks up where the turn-of-the-century Christian men’s movement dropped the ball. Finally, someone has left “the elementary teachings about the Christ,” and gone on to maturity. Wiley assumes a basic understanding of the gospel and spiritual life and moves on to the practical matters of living out the faith in an increasingly unstable world. He unearths the ancient idea of the household, not as a place to eat dinner, watch a sitcom, and go to bed—a place from which we depart every day to work in the “real world”—but as it once was: a spiritual, social, economic, and political shelter that creates a world for generations of those who come under its roof.

Having given that endorsement I hasten to add that I disagreed with some of his ideas and found others not quite wrong, just over-torqued. Still, he is at least asking the right questions and offering thoughtful answers, a rarity in Christian men’s books.

Most guys don’t like to read, but this one is written to men for men. Wiley is a preacher, but unlike many of my kind he doesn’t waste words just because it comes easy (See? Those last five were superfluous. I can do this all day!). He uses what I call “man-speak.” Reading his book is like sitting around the table with Lewis and Clarke, planning their trip or a group of engineers and thinkers, planning to build a city. Serious men gathered for an interesting, challenging job, with enough humor thrown in to keep everybody’s egos in check. At twelve chapters and 135 pages it is also short. Each chapter takes about 15-20 minutes to read.

If you’re a young man trying to figure out how to navigate your family through this unstable world you would benefit from this book.

[1] From the Introduction.

PLAYGROUND FAITH In a Toys R’nt Us World

PLAYGROUND FAITH In a Toys R’nt Us World

Our church took a step of faith this month, spending about $10,000 on a new playground that should serve us for another twenty years. But the faith had nothing to do with raising money. Being a frugal bunch, we had been setting aside funds for capital improvements for years. No, the faith had to do with spending it on play-equipment in the first place. The way things are going in America, playgrounds could become a thing of the past, relics of the baby-boom gone bust.

Consider the trends: Seventy-year-old icon of childhood, Toys R Us, just closed all 800 stores, blaming the Amazon insurgency along with Wal-Mart and Target for its market decline. They were also over-leveraged, but the root of the problem is declining demand. “Most of our end-customers are newborns and children,” they said in a statement, “and, as a result, our revenue are dependent on the birthrates in countries where we operate. In recent years, many countries’ birthrates have dropped or stagnated as their population ages, and education and income levels increase.”[1]

Bottom-line, men and women aren’t getting married as often or as young as they used to. When they do they aren’t having as many babies, if they have any at all. Breakpoint’s John Stonestreet reports that the U.S. fertility rate is near 1.77 children per woman, or below the replacement rate necessary to sustain our population at current levels.[2] Children are expensive to have and costly to raise, we reason, and that’s true. But the more we treasure our treasure the less we value life.

The roots of this lie in the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the advent of “the pill,” when we divorced sex from marriage and devalued children in the process. But it has greater ramifications than the closing of a toy store chain. The supply of young workers that keep an economy growing and social programs funded declines as the population grays and demand for social services increases. Financial crises loom as this population mega-shift occurs.

But there’s more to it than that. Having children pleases God and drives spiritual growth.

From the Genesis mandate to “be fruitful and multiply,” to Jesus’s command to “let the little children come to me,” the Bible is a pro-children book. “Children are a reward from God … a crown to the aged,” wrote Solomon.[3] Ask any grandparent and you will hear “Amen!”

Raising children from diapers to diplomas is the most demanding thing anyone can do, and the most spiritually rewarding. Kids expose our selfishness and call out service: will I buy that new boat or put money aside for braces? Volunteer to coach soccer or stay in bed on Saturday mornings? Children also challenge our moral inconsistencies: “Daddy, should you really be driving that fast … on the way to church?” Most uncomfortably, children reveal our character flaws just by sharing our DNA. It’s humbling to realize that those little ones who “look just like Daddy!” also share his penchant for show-boating, self-pity, arrogance, and mendacity.

Finally—and this is only a partial list—children teach us total dependence on God. Ask any parent who has ever said, “My child will never (fill-in-the-blank),” and they will tell you that there is only one God and we aren’t him. We have no ability whatsoever to control outcomes in the lives of our little ones. God created them, gave them free will, and allows them to use it. Sooner or later—and the sooner the better—we release them to him and pray, trusting when they fall that he will raise them up, and rejoicing when they succeed.

So, building playgrounds is an act of faith. But having babies is even greater. May God bless us all with more of both.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/03/15/toys-r-uss-baby-problem-is-everybodys-baby-problem/

[2] http://www.breakpoint.org/2018/04/breakpoint-toys-r-us-to-close-down/

[3] Psalm 127:3 & Proverbs 17:6

WHY ME, LORD?

We passed and nodded to each other as I exited the Bo Jangles restaurant, the WWII veteran who stormed Normandy on that longest day long ago. He’s gone now, laid to rest with so many of that greatest generation. He raised two sons here, one of whom helped start the Church I serve, and the other I met in Georgia, who connected me with that Church. I’ve had the privilege to know and be mentored by others, WWII and Korean War vets, men who lived a hundred lives in combat before mine ever began. Also, the Vietnam veterans I’ve come to know over the years, some of whom became dear friends.

Why me, Lord? Why was I born between the wars, after Korea, just before Nam? Why did I come of age after it ended, before I could be drafted? I think often of those men and those wars, as well as the men and women of the generation behind me, who’ve been fighting since 9-11, and though I honor them I am also thankful that I did not have to endure combat.

A photo from 2005 rests on the shelf in my office. I’m surrounded by Papuans, reading a Ketengban Bible. A mere thirty years prior they were still stone-age cannibals, living naked in the mountains, killing and being killed, scared of the spirits inhabiting every shadow.

Why me Lord? Why was I not born six thousand feet up the side of an equatorial mountain, child of spear-wielding cannibals? I think about my Ketengban friends, about how far they must travel, generation’s worth, before they will ever have anything like the life I’ve known.

I also think of Jackie, Randy, Doug, and others born ten years or more before me, who limp through life with great difficulty and never without a crutch, each afflicted with polio.

Why me Lord? Why was I born after the discovery of the polio vaccine and other such life-saving treatments?

I could go on and on, but I think you get my drift. I was born in the best country on earth, at the best time on earth, to some of the best people on earth, in one of the best climates on earth, in the most prosperous economy on earth, under the best health care system on earth, equipped with the best Bible scholarship on earth in order to have what I have and do what I do on earth. And so were most of you.

What are we to make of all of that? Only this: Give thanks for the providence of God and let it cause you to seek him and help others do the same.

From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.[1]

Happy Thanksgiving!

[1] The Holy Bible: New International Version. 1984 (Ac 17:26–27). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

JESUS’S UN-AMERICAN DREAM

Michael Jordan, principal owner and chairman of the Charlotte Hornets and one of the greatest professional basketball players ever, retired from the court in 2003 as one of the game’s wealthiest contestants.

The owner of the Chicago Bulls, Jerry Reinsdorf, for whom Jordan played most of his career, remarked at the time, “He’s living the American Dream. The American Dream is to reach a point in your life where you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do and can do everything that you do want to do.”

I do this. So do you. We like to set up our lives so that we don’t have to get involved with the world’s problems if we don’t want to. We can’t do it on the scale of a wealthy person like Jordan. But we do it in other ways. And when we do we leave Jesus’s decidedly Un-American dream for us out of the equation.

What is Jesus’s Un-American dream?

“You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its flavor, how will it be made salty again? It is good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do men light a lamp and place it under a bushel, but on the lamp stand; and so it gives light to all who are in the house.” (Matthew 15:13-14).

All of us are aware of the increasing darkness of western culture. We see corruption, rampant immorality, the porn epidemic, the growth of the so-called euthanasia movement, the redefinition not only of marriage but of what it means to be male and female even in kindergarten, and the increasing assaults on religious freedom.

We see it and far too many of us react in fear and withdrawal, happy to cast blame on “them,” “the culture,” or “the world,” but unable to see the Lord’s Un-American calling on ourselves.

The late Anglican cleric John R.W. Stott made a pertinent observation about this.

“If the house is dark at night, there is no sense in blaming the house. That’s what happens when the sun goes down. The question to ask is, “Where is the light?”

“If meat goes bad, there is no sense in blaming the meat. That is what happens when the bacteria are allowed to breed unchecked. The question to ask is, “Where is the salt?”

“If society becomes corrupt like a dark night or stinking fish, there’s no sense in blaming society. That’s what happens when fallen human society is left to itself and human evil is unrestrained and unchecked. The question to ask is “Where is the church?”

God leaves his people – us – here for a reason. He could have said, “Come out, be separate, start a holy commune, create your own economy, your own schools, your own record companies, your own TV shows. Isolate yourselves in suspicious fear of all that is in the world.  Hide out in the holy ghetto until I come and get you!”

But that isn’t what he said. He said, “Stay there! Stay in the world! Keep it from rotting. Guide it toward that which is good!”

We are the salt of the earth. We are the light of the world. That’s Jesus’s Un-American dream for us.