SUCCESS UNDER STRESS 2

I hope you’ve had the experience of working in a high challenge, high nurture environment. That’s what Tim had with Paul. He spent the first decade or so of his ministry with the indomitable apostle. He hiked mountains, sailed the seas, argued on the Areopagus, preached in parts unknown, and learned the heights and depths of God’s love at the feet of the author of Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians. Tim did all of that – but always in a supporting role – never on the point. His mentor and friend, Paul, was always there to encourage, and comfort, and most of all lead. The benefits of that kind of coaching can’t be counted, but it’s hard to leave it behind.

All of a sudden you’re out there solo. All the decisions are yours to make, yours to fly or die with. That’s where Timothy was and he was finding it hard, so hard it seems he wanted to bail out.

Thus Paul’s exhortation: Stay there. Be content where you are Tim. Fight the good fight (1 Timothy 1:18). Hold on to faith and a good conscience.

What does it mean to stay there? I suggest it means two things: being content with what we have–our possessions, and trusting God with where we are–our position.

Timothy’s position had changed. He was no longer in the high-nurture environment he once shared with Paul. He was enduring scrutiny he’d never known, making supervisory decisions without back-up (he couldn’t email Paul for help), while simultaneously trying to train the next generation of leaders. That’s a tough position for a young man.

Timothy’s “possessions,” his gifting, and temperament, and stamina were also different from Paul’s. The Apostle to the Gentiles was old – old enough to call Timothy “my son” – tough, and ambitious. Timothy wasn’t wired that way. He comes across in the text as a bit timid, eager to please, and physically handicapped by “frequent ailments.” (1 Timothy 5:23).

It would be easy for Tim, and for us, to think that with all those limits, God couldn’t use him; to bail out because of inadequacies, wimp out because of weakness, lay low because of limits. But Paul wouldn’t let him off the hook. Instead, he exhorted Tim to:

“Get the word out. Teach all these things. And don’t let anyone put you down because you’re young. Teach believers with your life: by word, by demeanor, by love, by faith, by integrity. Stay at your post reading Scripture, giving counsel, teaching. And that special gift of ministry you were given when the leaders of the church laid hands on you and prayed—keep that dusted off and in use.” (1 Timothy 4:11-14 The Message).

Paul is telling his young friend: Tim you have powerful gifts! You don’t have to have mine to be effective! Use what you have! Use them and watch God work!

Staying there means giving yourself permission to be happy with where you are: your position, and working with what you have: your possessions.

Staying there means doing what you can, with what you have, right where you are for the glory of God.

It’s Joseph, content to interpret the dreams of fellow prisoners until it was God’s time to interpret Pharaoh’s.

It’s Moses, content to tend sheep for forty years in the desert until God called him to lead a nation out of bondage.

It’s David, content to use a sling to slay a Giant until God made him a King and gave him an army.

And it’s you and it’s me doing what we can, with what we have, right where we are for the glory of God.

SUCCESS UNDER STRESS

Are you feeling stressed? Pressured? Overloaded?

Many of you are returning to school soon, some to totally new environments, some to increasing responsibility as you near the end of your educational career and the beginning of your working career. That’s stressful.

Some of you are under tremendous pressure at work. One guy described his day as “walking into a buzz saw.” Here’s a little research on the subject:

The average office worker gets 220 messages a day—in e-mails, memos, phone calls, interruptions, and ads.

A survey of 1,313 managers on four continents found that “one-third of managers suffer from ill health as a direct consequence of stress associated with information overload. This figure increases to 43 percent among senior managers.”

The sheer volume of information you have to screen, absorb and respond to can make you sick.

Then there are those other “little” stressors that anybody with a lot of responsibility and little authority can relate to:

 Dealing with spin – information comes to us like a Clayton Kershaw curve ball. It looks like the straight stuff until it gets to the plate. The truth gets lost in the rumor mill or shady ethics.
 Office Politics – strained relationships between others in your organization make your job more difficult.
 Political Correctness – rears its head conscience requires you to say things no one wants to hear.
 Administrative Hassles – you want to hire the best qualified person, you know who it is, but you have to jump through a bunch of hoops first to keep the watchdogs happy.
 Communication Breakdown – they say the package would arrive Monday, but you heard them promise it would be there Friday.

If you can connect with any of that you can connect with Pastor Tim of the first Church of Ephesus. He was dealing with the same issues dressed in church clothes.

 Spin – Legalism, Gnosticism and superstitious mysticism were confusing the church.
 Politics – Strained relationships between church members put him in the middle.
 Political Correctness – The role of women be in the church had to be addressed.
 Administrative Issues – Who could serve as elder? Deacon? How would they be qualified?
 Communication – Tim had to set the example of clear communication and following through on commitments.

Let me go back to my original question. Are you feeling overloaded? Pressured? Stressed to the max? If so you might be feeling like Pastor Tim: RUN BABY RUN!

It’s apparent from Paul’s very first instruction to Tim that he was ready to bug out. “As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus …” (1 Timothy 1:3a emphasis added).

That was not what Tim was hoping to hear. But it’s one of the keys to success in high stress. “Stay there,” he said. “Fight the good fight, hold on to your faith, keep your conscience clear, and stay there.”

If God has placed you in a tough situation, stay in it. Don’t bail out just because your palms are getting sweaty. If you’re sure God is in it, you stay in it. Problems are just opportunities dressed in scary costumes. God has something to teach you and something to accomplish through you in that difficult spot. If you bail out now you may never learn what you can be and you may never see what God can do.

THE MOLECH / PLANNED PARENTHOOD PARADIGM

Everything had to be carefully prepared. The attendants laid fuel for the fire in the rearward facing hearth of the hollow, life-sized bronze figure.  The musicians began softly, building intensity and volume as the fire grew hotter and the statue began to glow. The worshippers, having already made lesser offerings in the first six chapels, entered the seventh chamber to the mind-numbing thunder of pounding drums and clashing cymbals and a now red-hot bronze of a man with the head of a bull, seated on a throne with blazing arms outstretched to receive their infant sacrifice. Welcome to the 15th century B.C. worship of Molech, where the cries of the victims were swallowed up by the cacophony of the celebration.

I paint that ancient picture to remind you that no one should be surprised by what we are seeing in the video expose´ of Planned Parenthood’s baby-parts-for-dollars enterprise. In the first place, syndicated columnist Mona Charen reported on this practice as far back as 1999.  But more importantly, human nature has not changed.

Molech, mentioned in Leviticus 18:20, was one of the gods of the people who occupied the land before Israel came in. From an ancient, near eastern perspective the local deities “held the franchise” on prosperity. If you lived in Egypt you needed to know the Egyptian gods. Ditto in Babylon. But in Canaan you needed to know the Canaanite gods. They held the keys – if you were inclined to forget the real God – to your prosperity, your physical health and wellbeing. When you come right down to it, idolatry was economically driven.

Now, put yourself in the 21st century shoes of a young, unmarried woman. She lives in a culture that prides itself on sexual freedom and expression. Her culture also increasingly frowns on traditional families and motherhood and urges women to find fulfillment in a professional career, in having money, and things, and freedom. Then she finds herself unexpectedly pregnant. She learns that the father of the child isn’t interested in being a father. She will bear the parenting burden alone. Perhaps her parents won’t help. She will bear the financial burden alone. She can afford to go to college or raise a child, but not both, her economic chances are being constrained. Or perhaps she is already in a professional career, one that will not make room for a child. What are her options?

Meanwhile the High Priestesses of Choice chant, “It’s about your freedom! Your body! Your rights!” And the drums of fear thunder louder in her ears, and the “clinicians” cymbals clash ‘it’s only tissue’, ‘a simple procedure’, ‘over in a moment’, adding to her confusion, drowning out the silent screams of the baby in her womb.

The arms of Molech wait in Planned Parenthood clinics all over America. The only difference is that they’ve figured out it’s more financially advantageous not to incinerate “the product,” but to sell it.

The question for us is: Can this situation change? Pro-life leaders in Congress are proposing legislation to defund Planned Parenthood, and I hope they succeed. Only when hearts change, however, will we stop the abortion holocaust. We must work upstream of politics with the message of hope in Jesus Christ. He alone can open the eyes and secure the hearts of women in fear. He alone can free us from the greed that drives the abortion industry.

If you are a woman who has undergone an abortion and you feel the brokenness and the guilt of it, there is hope. If you are a person who has worked in the industry and now regret it, there is hope. The guilt you feel has been born by another. The defilement you feel as a human being can be washed away. Jesus Christ, born of a woman, born under the law, was sacrificed as our penalty for sin and was raised so that we could be free. He has poured out his Spirit on us so that we can be cleansed. I urge you to invite him in to your life, to be your Lord and savior today.

MAX is good for the family

Tired of over-the-top, digitized special effects? Weary of wacko main characters, vulgar vocabularies, and gruesome violence? Meet MAX, the brave dog that beats the bad guys and mends a broken family. MAX isn’t “Mad,” isn’t a “Trainwreck,” nor is he “Furious,” though the villains in this film would like everyone to think so. MAX is a war hero who desperately needs a friend.

Sounds syrupy and predictable, right? Yes, it is, in all the right ways.

MAX, the story of an ex-war dog suffering from PTSD, and the grieving family of his late handler, is rated PG for mild profanity and violence. It is currently playing in theaters to yawning reviews and low numbers, which means it will go to DVD and probably Netflix sooner than later. Frankly, I’m OK with that, because it will make the film available to more families seeking wholesome entertainment on a budget. We need this kind of storytelling because it encourages the values we want to build in our kids and reminds parents of the things that really matter.

And the film is stuffed with those things: the sacrifices and service of our military, selfless loyalty, sacrificial friendship, racial bridge building, the power of honesty, and the importance of both parents in the lives of children.

MAX also deals honestly with the power of grief and the subtle slide into unintended consequences brought on by greed and pride. The best part of the film (spoiler alert) is when main human character, Justin, the younger brother of the dead Marine, faces a devil’s bargain. His illegal downloading and reselling of video games has put him in a compromising position with the local drug dealer. He must choose between the dog who loves him and exposure of his crime to his parents, not to mention the loss of income from his hacking. He succumbs, at first, to his darker nature, but is brought to repentance by two things: the humble honesty of his dad and the indomitable love of his dog.

God’s Word encourages us to fill our minds with things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, and praiseworthy. There’s a reason for that. “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” The more we meditate on positive values, the more likely we are to imitate them and experience the peace; the Shalom of a godly life. Stories stick in our memories better than anything else, especially in the minds of children. MAX is the best kind of story because it is noble, pure, and praiseworthy. I encourage you to watch it with your family.

THE INFORMATION / OPTION OVERLOAD and what to do about it

It has never been more important to choose, or more difficult.

Information used to be hard to come by. Now we carry more data and processing power around in our handheld devices than Neal Armstrong took to the moon, and it increases exponentially by the hour. Lev Grossman, in the June 25 issue of TIME, reports, “Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, once estimated that every two days humanity creates a quantity of data equivalent to the entire amount created from the dawn of time up until 2003 … Every day humanity tweets 500 million times, shares 70 million photos on Instagram and watches 4 billion videos on Facebook. For every minute that passes, we upload 300 hours of new content to YouTube.”

And it isn’t just information. Consider the options before us as consumers:

• More than 800,000 apps in the Apple App Store
• 240-plus selections on the Cheesecake Factory menu, not including lunch or brunch special
• 135 mascaras, 437 lotions and 1,992 fragrances at Sephora.com
• In 1980, the typical credit card contract was about 400 words long. Today, many are 20,000 words.
• One company, PC Pitstop, deliberately buried a clause in its end-user license agreement, offering $1,000 to the first person who emailed the company at a certain address. It took five months and 3,000 sales until someone claimed the money.*

We are a culture in the middle of information – option overload.

It used to be that if you wanted to find a spouse you went to church, the social, to college, or to a bar. With e-Dating your options are almost endless. If you wanted a job you either did what dad did or apprenticed out, or looked at the classifieds. Now you post your skill set on Linkedin for thousands of HR managers to read, and tell all your Facebook friends what you’re looking for.

The information – option boom is both a blessing and a curse; a blessing because more options mean a greater range of possibilities, and a curse because more info and options make choosing more difficult. We want to make the best decision possible, so we keep searching, keep clicking, keep scanning, and keep hesitating. That’s where the rub comes, and where I see many people floundering, missing out on God’s best for their lives.

The modern proverb, “Failing to choose is choosing to fail,” is close to the point. Every choice has costs, the first of which is that it excludes other choices. But refusing to choose slams the door to the fruit that can only be produced by disciplined, long-term commitment to a single path. For example, I would love to be able to play the piano and speak another language, but I never committed to either task and cannot experience the blessings. Some choices, like marriage, like financial discipline, or like personal growth, are more serious. Refusing to choose is in fact a choice: a choice of perpetual drift, unending insecurity, and guaranteed mediocrity.

We cannot know all outcomes of all possible options, so we must choose, and that choice comes down to faith. The Bible is a book about a God who chooses a people and calls them into the blessings of obedience, the benefits of choosing faith in his word, his plan, and his Son. He wants what is best for us and has given us instructions on how to live in a world of endless options. All we have to do is choose.

It’s never been more important to choose, or more difficult. But we make our choices and then our choices make us. Make the choice to obey God and you will know the fruit of a life with him.

*Alan Siegel and Irene Etzkorn, “When Simplicity Is the Solution,” The Wall Street Journal (3-29-13)

AFTER OBERGEFELL: A Biblical Response to the New Law of the Land

Long-time family friend, Cyndi Simmons, hosts the radio program Heart of the Matter, a ministry “for women seeking the elegance of God’s wisdom.” (Find her at http://clsimmons.com/). Cyndi asked if I would provide some pastoral feedback on the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision that legalized same-sex marriage in all fifty states. I hope you find my responses to her questions helpful.

Q: How do we get past discouragement over this ruling?
First, remember who God is and do not be afraid. I don’t know what does this for you, but I just returned from vacation on the beach. Standing there at sunrise, where earth and sky and water meet, sensing with my whole being the endless rhythms of wind and wave and feeling in my bones the vastness of creation, helps me remember who is really in charge of the planet. It isn’t the Supreme Court. The puny voices of two men and three women will not overturn nature or the decisions of nature’s God. Human civilizations rise and fall like the tides. Ours may be falling, but that is no cause for alarm for those who love God and are called according to his purpose.

Second, remember that resurrections don’t happen without crucifixions. We are witnessing the death of many things in our culture: the death of family, the death of churches, and the death of reason itself. I believe we are also watching the death of cultural Christianity, which I see as a good thing. Keep your eyes on Christ the first fruits, and watch with hope for what comes next.

Third, from a strictly earthly point of view, keep in mind that Americans love the underdog. The same sex community has successfully painted itself as the underdog for over thirty years. Now they’re the top dog. I expect that the victors will soon increase oppression of their opponents. When they do, if we seek the good of the city and continue to serve our communities, public opinion will shift, and we will become the underdogs.

Q: As women, compassion energizes us. We want to have compassion on these confused people. How can we do that without accepting their bad choices?

Because Christ has had compassion on us, we can have compassion on anyone, not just sexually confused people. But how we express that compassion depends on whether they claim to be church members or not.

Rosaria Butterfield’s memoir, Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, is extremely helpful in understanding how to love your homosexual neighbor who doesn’t claim to be a church member. Other resources include Such Were Some of You, by Pure Passion media; Loving Your (LGBT) Neighbor, by Glenn Stanton; Sing Over Me, the biography of Dennis Jernigan, and the works of John Stonestreet and Eric Metaxas and the team at Breakpoint.org.

For church members, the Apostle Paul clearly delineated this for us in 1 Corinthians 5: 9-13. If someone “calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler,” we must not associate with him or her, not even to eat a meal. The reason is a compassionate one, so that the one caught in sin may understand the gravity of the issue, that by their choices they have alienated themselves from Christ and his body. Hopefully this drastic measure will help bring them to their senses. But it is a last resort, and should be preceded by the careful application of the principles of church discipline Jesus gave us in Matthew 18, along with the sensitivity expressed by Paul in Galatians 6:1. (Note: churches that are unwilling to engage in discipline against the rest of the sins on that list are being hypocritical if they discipline the sexually immoral).

I should include here that, because there is so much cultural Christianity in western civilization, as a pastor I make a distinction when applying this teaching between members of the church I lead, and people who claim membership in other churches. I am only responsible to discipline someone who has covenanted with God and my congregation to uphold the standards we have embraced. That said I should include that I do not associate with pastors who have embraced LGBT theology, because they are held to higher standards.

Q: Based on Romans 12:1- 2 our devotion to Christ is 24/7. How can we effectively live out our faith as society becomes less tolerant of what we believe?

The good news here is that living under persecution has been standard operating procedure for God’s people from the get go. You and I became adults in a historical blink of time when Christianity was ascendant. The Bible is full of examples of how to live faithfully as aliens on planet earth. The book of Daniel, which I plan to teach through this fall, is a good example, as is Esther. First and second Peter also comes to mind. The point is that a treasure chest of spiritual riches awaits us in these books, but we’ve never seen them because we’ve never had to.

The complete interview airs Thursday, July 9, on http://clsimmons.com/.

CONSCIENCE V. CAKE

Regular readers of the Danville Register Bee Sunday Op/Ed section were treated to a dish of red herring last week served up by one John Laughlin, who is described as a Hebrew Bible scholar and field archaeologist. Laughlin’s Op/Ed piece, BAKING CAKES IS NOT THE REAL ISSUE (Sunday, May 31, page A11), is a response to an excellent article by John Carpenter, pastor of Covenant Reformed Baptist Church in Caswell County, North Carolina, titled PERSECUTION US STYLE (Sunday, April 26, page A11, Friday April 24, Community Views).

Mr. Laughlin’s position is that the religious freedom defense offered by business owners who refuse to celebrate same-sex marriage is “an irrelevant argument or consideration introduced into a discussion to direct attention from the original issue,” a red herring. He then proceeds to offer up a dish of the same.

Mr. Carpenter does not need my help. His article is well reasoned and well documented and I urge you to read it. However, Mr. Laughlin’s article makes a number of assumptions and accusations typical of those who do not know the New Testament argument against homosexuality in general and same-sex marriage in particular. He also claims that “all scientific studies over the past 40 years or so have clearly shown that homosexuality is neither the result of inclinations nor choice.” I don’t have space to address that other than to say that “all” is a pretty big word and bears careful scrutiny, but I will address his mistakes with the New Testament.

First, Laughlin says, “The claim still made by some from within the church that homosexuality is a deviant, sinful and depraved choice reflects the sexual biases of those making these claims …” Actually, we are only citing the teaching of Jesus and the Apostles. Let’s look at Jesus, then the Apostles.

No, Jesus didn’t directly address homosexuality, but he didn’t need to. He was ministering in Israel and Jerusalem to a people immersed in the Law of Moses which specifically forbade homosexuality and cross-gender dressing. What Jesus did do was raise the threshold of what constituted sexual sin by teaching that any sexual activity outside the marriage of a man and woman was wrong and constituted grounds for divorce. This teaching occurs in Matthew 5:32 and is repeated in Matthew 19:9. In both places the Greek word used to translate his comments (Jesus spoke Aramaic) is pornaei, the root of our word pornography. In the common Greek of the day everyone understood this to encompass all forms of sexual activity outside of marriage, including homosexuality.

Second, Matthew 19:1- 6 also clearly articulates Jesus’ affirmation of heterosexual marriage as the order of creation, God’s original design for men, women and families, concluding with, “what God has joined together, let not man separate.” He was of course addressing his opponent’s desire for easy divorce, but can anyone really imagine that he would authorize the re-engineering of God’s original design? We can’t.

Third, the Apostles, most notably Paul, who did minister outside of Israel in the Gentile world where homosexuality was rampant, clearly addressed it in a number of places. See 1Corinthians 6:9-11; Romans 1:26 – 27 (where he does address lesbianism, contra to Laughlin); 1 Timothy 1:10. See also Jude 7; Hebrews 13:4.

Fourth, Laughlin assumes that believers support our position by cherry picking verses from the Old Testament, notably Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, which require the execution of people caught in homosexual behavior, and ignoring others, like Leviticus 20:10 which requires the same punishment for adulterers. Well, you know what they say about assumptions. The decision that freed Christians from having to follow all of the Mosaic Law was made by the Apostles and elders in the first church council around 50 A.D., which is recorded in Acts 15:1-29. The Council essentially prohibited two things: idolatry of any kind and immorality (porneia again). Further, any student of the New Testament will tell you that Christ fulfilled the punishment portions of the Old Testament law. We live under grace, but that grace is not a license to indulge our sinful inclinations (see Romans 6; Galatians 5:13). Rather, it is a call to live in holiness in everything we do, including the things we get involved in through our businesses.

Bottom line: It’s not about cake. It’s about our consciences.

THE BRAIN, BELLY CONNECTION

May is Mental Health Awareness Month

“I’m a pretty capable person,” the man said, as we sipped our coffee early one morning. “I have a master’s degree and work in a field that I love; I have a great family, healthy children, and an excellent marriage. I have tons of things to be grateful for. My spiritual disciplines are in place and I exercise regularly. Yet there are days, more of them than I would like to admit, when sadness, even hopelessness overwhelms me. I feel I’m walking on the edge of the looney bin, wondering when it’s going to crumble and take me down with it. I’ve read all the self-help books. I know the stuff about minding your mind and choosing joy and trusting God and all that. But I’m telling ya, sometimes whole weeks go by when it takes all the emotional energy I have just to do the basics of my life. I spend the days wanting nothing more than to go home, crawl in bed and cover my head with a sheet. Then there are other days, normal ones without crisis, when I’m so anxious I’m almost frantic. So, am I nuts, or what? And where does God come into this?”

If you can identify with that imaginary conversation then read on, I have good news for you.

The first thing to know is that if you struggle with depression and anxiety, you are not alone and you are not crazy. May is mental health awareness month (credit to President Obama for that designation). The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) reports that at any given time there are roughly sixty million Americans, adults and teens, sharing your experience.

Second, God is not absent in your distress. He is an “ever present help in time of trouble,” Psalm 46:1. But we are complex beings made up of body, soul, and spirit which cannot be separated from one another. The Psalmist also said, “… you knit me together in my mother’s womb,” Palm 139:13. We are woven like fabric. Pulling on one thread affects all the others. Your spirit might be fine but if your body is malfunctioning your soul may experience distress.

This brings me to the good news. Researchers are discovering links between the microbiome, the trillions of bacteria that live on and in our bodies, and disease, auto-immune disorders, and obesity. But the most fascinating finding may be the connection between our brains and bellies.

Researchers are finding that a significant link exists between the bacteria that live in our digestive system and our brains. We’ve known for centuries that the mind can affect the belly, but we’ve never considered that it could work in reverse. World Magazine reports that feeding mice a particular bacterium found in milk and yogurts produced a measurable increase in the receptors in lab mice’s brains for GABA, a chemical targeted by anti-anxiety medications like Valium and Xanax. These in turn reduced behaviors associated with depression and anxiety in the mice. Severing the nerves that transmit information from the mice’s gut to the brain cut off the effects of the bacterium on behavior and brain chemicals.

The article continued:
In another study, researchers at UCLA found that women who regularly consumed beneficial bacteria through yogurt showed changes in their brains when they were imaged using a special MRI scanner. Commenting on the study published in Gastroenterology, lead author Dr. Kirsten Tillisch noted “our findings indicate that some of the contents of yogurt may actually change the way our brain responds to the environment.

Interestingly, recent research has also shown that the majority of our serotonin, the critical neurotransmitter that is regulated by common anti-depression and anti-anxiety medications like Zoloft and Paxil, is produced in the gut. In other words, the antibiotics we have used and overused for decades may be contributing to our mental problems, as they destroy the healthy as well as the bad bacteria. Either way, it’s clear from the research, that we truly are what we eat.

So if you are experiencing the symptoms of depression and anxiety I urge you to do three things that honor the way God has woven you together. First, pay attention to your spiritual life, as there may be issues between you and God that need to be settled in order to find peace. Second, mind your mind. Read Paul’s instructions in Philippians 4:4-9 and put it into practice and if you need it, go see a counselor. If you find that you are still struggling, then it may be time to check the connection between your belly and your brain.

TAKING THE BAKER’S CHALLENGE

“Have you ever counted how many times Jesus answered questions with questions?”
Gordon H. Clark

Two college girls asked my advice in the same week on the same topic. One asked how to respond to a blog that went viral, If I Have Gay Children: four promises from a Christian pastor. The girls in the dorm of the large Christian University that she supervised were showing a surprising level of agreement with the pastor’s unorthodox position. The other asked how to respond to a virulently anti-gay preacher on her secular college campus. Each was afraid that they would be put on the defensive, having to support the positions they have taken on homosexuality in a hostile environment.

They were wise to do so. Our opportunities to practice Jesus’ methods for responding to politically driven attacks are about to multiply exponentially. In light of this the founder of World Magazine, Joel Belz, has issued what he calls The Baker’s Challenge. Imagine a homosexual couple has entered your bakery and asked you to provide a cake for their wedding a month from now. Keeping in mind Jesus’ method of answering a question with a question, along with his teaching on giving someone your cloak when they’ve sued you for your tunic and going the second mile when forced to go the first, (See Matt. 5:38-42) how would you respond?

Here’s my best shot at part one, answering a question with a question.

“Thank you so much for bringing your business to our door. We really appreciate it. It tells us that you respect the values we’ve built into the business. Now, in order to best serve you, I need to ask a question: Do you believe marriage is something that came to us from God, or is it a man-made institution?”

Let’s assume for argument’s sake that our customer answers, “From God.” We might then respond with:

“If it’s from God, what is the pattern for marriage that Jesus taught?” (See Matthew 19:1-6).

These questions follow Jesus’ pattern when the chief priests, the teachers of the law, and the elders challenged his authority in Mark 11:27-30. First, his response revealed their world view, “John’s baptism – was it from heaven, or from men? Tell me!” If they answered, “from heaven” Jesus could rightly challenge: “then why didn’t you believe him?” If they answered, “from men,” then their public approval rating would plummet.

Our question re-frames the argument. It is not a matter of “will I bake a cake for you,” but “what is marriage, to whom does it belong?”
Jesus’ question to his opponents also revealed their hypocrisy. Just as the chief priests weren’t questioning Jesus in order to discover truth, but to find cause to arrest him, at this stage in the PR game same sex couples that enter Christian-owned bake-shops aren’t there to buy a cake but to provoke a legal battle that will stifle and oppress anyone who refuses to celebrate the LGBT agenda.

Assuming our customers still insist that we bake the cake, here’s part two, or how I would go the extra mile.

“There are three other cake shops in town. We often refer our friends to them when we are overbooked. I believe they can do a better job for you than I can. However, if that does not satisfy you, I will be happy to pay for all of the ingredients that go into the cake, and you can have anyone you want bake it.”

That’s as far as I would take Jesus’ teaching on going the extra mile. The reason is that our obligations as 21st century American Christians extend to a third command of Christ that applies to us differently than it applied to Jewish subjects of 1st century Rome.

“Render to Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and to God that which is God’s,” applies differently in a representative democracy than it did in a dictatorship. In our context we the people are Caesar. We make the laws via our elected representatives. When we believe the laws and rulings coming from the legislatures, the judiciary, and or the executive are unjust and destructive to the body politic, contrary to what is best for our neighbors, and oppressive to our consciences it is our duty to oppose them, peaceably, within the democratic process, but resolutely.

By the way, it would behoove Christian bakers and everyone else who wants to apply this logic in their businesses to apply it just as rigorously to heterosexuals engaging in adulterous marriages. Then we would not be open to the charge of hypocrisy. If we’re going to insist on biblical ethics in one sphere of our businesses we better be prepared to insist on it everywhere.

LOST IN TRANSITION?

Has it hit you how many transitions happen this time of year? Graduations happen in May. High school is over, time to go to work, or maybe prepare for the move to college. College is over, time to find that first career step. Many leases run out in May; time to buy that first house. More houses are sold in June and July than any other month. The marriage industrial complex really cranks up in June. Singleness is over; time to figure out how to be married people.

The beginning of summer is often the beginning of a new chapter, a new season in life.
Unless you’re lost in transition; stuck somewhere at the end of the season you just completed, but not very sure of what to do next.

I don’t claim to be an expert on this, but here are some thoughts, based on Solomon’s advice in Ecclesiastes chapter three, that might help.

First, make sure to fully enjoy the season you are in. Maybe you aren’t in transition. Maybe you’re right in the middle of high school, or college, or parenting. Embrace it! Be all the way there! “Life is an hourglass glued to the table,”*  is true. This moment will pass all too soon. Don’t miss it by looking over the horizon.

Second, celebrate the season you just completed, and say goodbye. Did you graduate? Land your first job? Get married? Have your first child? Celebrate the goodness of God in your life for all that has gone before and brought you to this point, put your pictures in a photo album, and let it go. Say goodbye to the past. You won’t be traveling that way again. Let the good memories warm you and the bad ones warn you, but don’t live there. You can’t navigate a successful future by looking over your shoulder.

Third, embrace the road before you with faith, hope, and love. New seasons mean new decisions, new ways of thinking about old problems, new challenges, and new rewards. You won’t always get it right. Make the decision anyway. You won’t always be able to predict the outcome, do your homework and take the next step anyway. You won’t always be immediately appreciated for what you do, keep looking out for the wellbeing of the others around you anyway.

Finally, in all that you do, remember this: the world is a big and beautiful place, “too big for us, yet its satisfactions are too small.”**    We were made for eternity, made for relationship with the infinite Creator. Seek him every step of the way, walk with him through every season, and you will not get lost in transition.

*Anna Nalick, Breathe.
**NIV Study Bible, Ecclesiastes 3:11 notes.