SHEPHERD OF OUR SOULS

Most of us are aware of the severe suffering and persecution that our brothers and sisters in Christ, along with many others, are experiencing in the Middle East. I thank God that I am not a believer living in that part of the world, and I pray for them daily. But we don’t have to live in Iraq or be facing violent persecution to experience suffering. Suffering comes in many different forms.

Sometimes it comes into our lives simply as a result of living in a fallen world with fallible people, like the injured drivers who lost control of their cars when the throttle stuck open.

Other times suffering comes as a result of our own or a family member’s wandering. We are “like sheep going astray” says Peter, and when we do, or when a loved one does, we suffer for it. Like the friend who walked into my office twenty years ago and told me his wife had left him. “I was never at home. I was always at work,” he said. “But she was supposed to stick with me.” He was heartbroken. Another friend pushed his body to the breaking point because he financed his business venture with $70,000 of credit card debt. When his health failed, so did his business. Then there was the woman, suffering through her second divorce, who married her second husband on the rebound from her first marriage; and the guy who couldn’t keep his job because he couldn’t keep his temper.

The emotional torment of things like this can’t be measured. Bottle all the tears shed in the anguish of our souls and they would not begin to balance the scales of our sorrow.

Many of us know what that sorrow is like. But what we don’t know, or sometimes forget, is that there is Someone who cares very deeply about us. There is Someone whose compassion is as measureless as our sorrows, and whose mercy is deeper than our deepest fears. Peter calls him The Shepherd and Guardian of our souls. His name is Jesus.

The word “Shepherd” has a backpack full of meaning for us. I want to unpack some of that over the next couple of weeks, beginning today with the shepherd as leader.

The shepherd of our souls leads us. (See John 10:2-4). He goes out in front. He knows where the good pasture is. He knows where the best path is. He knows where our souls need to go in order to grow strong and healthy and prepared for the future. He leads us there. That means He goes ahead of us. If we find the way hard, we know he’s been there first.
Peter wrote, “When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.” (1 Peter 2:23).

Following Jesus doesn’t mean the way is always easy. Sometimes it’s very difficult. But when He is leading we know that the pain has meaning and leads to victory. We understand the purpose of the trial and have less trouble staying on task because we’re not worrying, “why is this happening to me?” Our Shepherd has gone before us, suffered this path ahead of us, and will continue to lead us no matter what.

Do you know the Shepherd of your soul? Can you hear his voice? Follow him, for he cares for you.

Q&A ON: IF I HAVE GAY CHILDREN Part 2 What’s the Loving Thing to Do?

A twenty-something college friend sent a link to a blog by a pastor in the Raleigh, North Carolina area titled IF I HAVE GAY CHILDREN: Four Promises From a Christian Pastor, by John Pavlovitz. The post has now gone viral. Part one of my reply spoke to his fourth promise, “If I have gay children, most likely I have gay children,” or the nature of human personality development and where “gayness” comes from.

Part two speaks to his other three promises:
1. If I have gay children, you’ll all know about it … I won’t hide it.
2. If I have gay children, I’ll pray for them … but not to change.
3. If I have gay children, I’ll love them … because they’re mine.

I’m a pastor. I have gay friends. I have church friends with gay children. All of us would agree with the gist of Pavlovitz’s promises. We understand his love for his children, and how he does not want to damage them. We understand his disgust and disappointment with those in evangelical and fundamentalist Christian circles who act like the Pharisees with the woman caught in adultery in John chapter 8. But we also agree with Jesus command to the woman at the end of that story: “Go now, and leave your life of sin.” We cannot in good conscience condone a path of life for our loved ones that God condemns. Those of us who are committed to the authority of Scripture and who call Christ Lord are called to a higher, more difficult standard of love. “Brothers” instructed the Apostle Paul, “if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted.”

Mr. Pavlovitz also mentions that, if his children turn out gay, he will not pray for them to change. But what is life in Christ if not the power to change, to overcome the destructive force of sin in our fallen human nature? When the Apostle Paul condemned a whole list of sins, including homosexuality, he concluded by saying, “And such were some of you, but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.” Notice the three points of restoration: “You were washed,” – the sin, along with its power to destroy, was taken away; “you were sanctified,” – set apart, you are no longer part of that world, the boundaries have been re-established and you are now part of God’s holy family; “you were justified,” – your guilt is taken away. All of this is accomplished not by the force of our will, but by the Spirit of the living God given to us as a result of Christ’s atoning death and victorious resurrection.

We make our choices and then our choices make us. But the good news is that the Spirit has the power to help us overcome and repair the damage done by our sinful reaction to the broken parts of our personalities and the choices we make. This is the gospel. Anything less, isn’t.

Those of us who hold this view and say it publicly, no matter how gently or compassionately we say it, are called bigots and homophobes. It just goes with the territory. But anything less isn’t really loving our children and it is disobedient to our Lord.

Q&A ON “IF I HAVE GAY CHILDREN” Part 1 Where Gayness Comes From

Last weekend a twenty-something college friend sent a link to a blog by a pastor in the Raleigh, North Carolina area titled IF I HAVE GAY CHILDREN: Four Promises From a Christian Pastor, by John Pavlovitz. My friend asked: I am really wrestling over this. I was just wondering what your thoughts were on the content of this pastor’s words? As the Pavlovitz blog seems to be going viral, (I’ve already seen it lauded on facebook), I thought it would be helpful to share part of my reply with you. Mr. Pavlovitz has made the same mistake about human nature, specifically where so-called “gayness” comes from, that most of the culture is making. The two most significant statements in the post are quoted here.

“I won’t pray for them to be made “normal”. I’ve lived long enough to know that if my children are gay, that is their normal.”

“If my kids are going to be gay, well they pretty much already are… They are today, simply a younger version of who they will be…”

Mr. Pavlovitz has adopted the widely promoted yet unprovable theory that the attractions and behaviors associated with homosexuality are hard-wired into the personality from birth. That makes God responsible for a person’s sexual orientation. Thus they can claim: “It’s not my fault. I’m just being what God made me to be.” That theory not only confuses the dignity of being made in the image of God with Darwinian predestination, but also fails to comprehend the complexity of human personality development and just how mold-able we humans really are. Our personalities, including our attractions and affections toward one or the other sex, are highly complex and can develop along a number of lines. Anyone can be homosexual, or heterosexual, given the right conditions and choices. In the Biblical world-view, there is no such thing as gay or straight. There are male and female, created for each other in the image of God. This is what Jesus taught (see Matthew 19:4-6). Men and women behave in ways that either reflect or reject the Designer’s intent. Either way, they are still men and women designed for each other in the image of God with the ability to choose who and what they will become. “Gayness,” “Straightness,” and all other such definitions of human relations are artificial, post-modern philosophical constructs, imposed upon us by the homosexual movement in the last four decades. They remove us from the pinnacle of creation as creatures with the God-like ability to choose, and reduce us to nothing more than victims of our biology, slaves of our impulses. In other words, homosexuality (“gay,” “questioning” and “transgender” issues) is a developmental disorder generated by the combination of a number of factors including but not limited to: personality type; parental role modeling and behavior within the home of origin; childhood stresses and trauma; peer pressure and peer reference groups; early sexual exposure, experimentation (either in person or vicariously through pornography) and often abuse; parental guidance and disciplinary practices along with cultural acceptance or “normalization,” (Mr. Pavlovitz is now participating in that in the lives of his children and readers) and of course the spiritual dimension. Take all of that – and all of it must be taken into account – mix it together with our sin nature (see Romans 7:7-25) and the successful media onslaught of the last four decades and the potential for gender role and sexual identity confusion is pretty high. What grieves me is that very few people, including pastors, are offering confused young people a well-reasoned and believable alternative approach to the feelings and experiences with which they are struggling. That is what I’ve attempted to do in my previous post titled, I’M NOT GAY and you probably aren’t either. Mr. Pavlovitz also commented on how he, as a Christian pastor, would react to his children if they decided they were gay. I’ll respond to that part of his comments next week.

I’M NOT GAY and you probably aren’t either

380656_3110034995316_541607756_nPerhaps you find yourself among the many young men of our day who wonder whether or not you might be gay. The conventional wisdom is pointing you in that direction. Some of the things you are feeling and experiencing seem to confirm that hypothesis. But you are also experiencing a good deal of confusion and anxiety over it. I’m writing this bit of testimony today in order to offer you a different paradigm, a different way to think about yourself, in hopes that it will encourage you to embrace the real you, the creature God designed you to be. I believe that in embracing that design you will find fulfillment and joy in your life and peace in your soul.

If you have no confusion, if you have no anxiety, and if you find the perspective I’m offering offensive, then you should probably stop reading here. But if you are wondering, please read on.

When I was a teenager my friends used to take bets on whether or not I was gay. The reasons, based on the conventional wisdom of the time, seemed pretty clear to them. I was not terribly aggressive or competitive. I enjoyed playing team sports but I was never very good at it. For me it was more about camaraderie than competition. I was and continue to be, unlike most men, a very verbal, expressive, emotive, empathetic and relational type of fellow. I am very comfortable expressing what I feel and talking about where those feelings come from. I am easily wounded by harshness and hate and avoid conflict, preferring to smooth things over rather than engage in confrontation. I have a very high emotional IQ and operate, like many women, with a decidedly developed sense of intuition.

That, however, wasn’t all that my friends had in mind as they gambled over my orientation. I was and am also very musical and love to move with it. Some of my earliest memories revolve around music and dance. I sang, tenor not bass, and acted in musicals and plays from elementary school through college. I LOVED the stage. My dream was to grow up and take over where Fred Astaire left off.

None of those traits seemed to fit the accepted masculine mold of the time which was, and still is to some extent, athletic, competitive, emotionally reserved, and “concrete / rational” in perspective rather than intuitive. You may also have noticed that “real men,” (a dubious phrase if ever there was one) are good at math, engineering, construction and carpentry and enjoy hunting, fishing pick-up trucks and hot rods. They don’t like to read, unless maybe it’s Field & Stream or Car & Driver, they never write and they would rather do things than talk about what they feel any day of the week. Heck, many of them are so divorced from their emotions they don’t even know what they feel.

Finally, and this is by no means an exhaustive list, my friends were betting on some of my behaviors and associations. I’m not sure what the “cues” are today, but when I was in high school certain behaviors were considered indicative of homosexuality. They seem silly now, but I’m not making this up. Does he cross one leg over the other like a girl? Or hang an ankle on a knee like a guy? Does he like to wear colorful clothes that match? Or T-shirts and jeans? Does he file his nails with his fingers spread like a guy or curled toward him like a girl? All of these things were considered to be indicators of gayness and I was guilty on all counts. (BTW: The very fact that I’m writing on this subject is today considered an indicator that I am indeed gay).

But perhaps most important were the people I hung out with. One of my best friends in High School was one year ahead of me and was struggling with his sexual identity. I didn’t know it at the time. I just knew that he was my friend. He helped me get my first job and gave me a ride to it before I could drive. When he and two other mutual friends went to a six-week, college credit, summer drama school in Alabama I went along and hung out with him and the director of the play we were producing. Our mutual friends hung out with the technical team leader and his crew. I was still unaware that my older friend, and the director, a high-school music and drama teacher from Dothan, Alabama who was working on his master’s degree, were practicing homosexuals. I just knew that they would smoke pot and get drunk with me and I thought that was cool. They were my friends.

I had more gay friends over the following years although I was often unaware of their lifestyle. What I was aware of is that I had more in common with these friends than other men. I enjoyed their company because we enjoyed many of the same things, music, the arts, and reading and shared many of the same traits. When, after high school, I finally learned of my friend’s secret life I was deeply upset by it and lashed out at him in anger. I couldn’t have explained then why I was so upset. But looking back on it thirty years later I realize that I felt a deep sense of betrayal, and not a little bit of fear. For reasons I’ll cover later I was a deeply insecure young man. If my good friend was gay, what did that really say about me?

If you are like me you are probably wondering two things: Where did those similarities come from? How come you didn’t turn out to be gay? The answers lie in two words that are hotly debated today: Nature and nurture.

Nature covers much of what I’ve said above. If men are from Mars and women are from Venus then I’m on some planet between the two whose orbit is closer to Venus. The encouraging thing I’ve discovered over the last thirty years is that I’m not alone. Many men, more than you might imagine, share the traits I’ve outlined above often attributed to women. And many women share traits more associated with men. My guess is the ratio is something like 30/70, or, three in ten women have personalities and gifting traditionally associated with men. Ditto for men with traits associated with women. That doesn’t make us gay. It does mean however that we will often feel somewhat out of the loop, disconnected, from the majority of our sex. If we take our cues from the culture, which is increasingly pro-gay, we may conclude quite erroneously that we are gay too.

One other aspect of our nature plays a major part in this drama, the power of which cannot be overstated: sex. The chemicals released in the brain during sex, dopamine, norepinephrine, oxytocin, serotonin, and testosterone have a supercharging effect on human emotional and psychological bonding. We might say that we “imprint” on the other person – be they male or female, photographed or in the flesh – in the sex act. I call it crossing the shame/ecstasy threshold. Once we overcome our inhibitions and experience our first sexual act, even if we were coerced or manipulated into it as a child by an adult or other child, or even if it was acting out as part of the consumption of pornography, we are forever shaped by it. The supercharging power of the chemicals released will drive us to seek that experience again. I was exposed to heterosexual pornography at a very early age. I followed a heterosexual path into adulthood. Had I been exposed to homosexual pornography at that age the outcome might have been very different.

Nurture covers the rest of it. Copious research indicates that children need healthy emotional connections with both of their parents. That connection includes three important elements: respect, identification, and affirmation. The child needs to respect both his mother and his father; identify with the parent of the same sex; and be affirmed in that identity by that parent. They gain their understanding of who they are and how they will get along in the world based on the models they see at home and the affirmation they receive. Failing a healthy connection with one parent, they will seek it in the other parent. By that I mean that sons who cannot connect with their fathers will get their emotional needs met and learn to orient themselves to their world through their mothers. It is possible for a mother to take her son too much into her world where, bit by bit, he loses his identity as a man. It is possible for a father to take his daughter too much into his world, where bit by bit, she loses her identity as a woman. Or a boy might identify more with his mother because she is a stronger personality than the father. Or a daughter might identify more with her father because her mother wilts under the father’s overbearing personality. There are many variations on this theme but the bottom line is that the balance and harmony of male and female in the home is lost and the sexual identity of the child easily confused.

It is a father’s job to help his sons orient themselves and find their footing in the larger world. But like many of my homosexual friends I had a dysfunctional relationship with my father. My dad loved his sons. But it was difficult for him to express it. (It will come as no surprise that he did not have a good relationship with his dad either). I desperately wanted his approval but it was difficult for him to give. (Dad said I was “pretty” and threatened to put a bow in my curly brown hair). My father also had a real problem with anger. He often lost his temper and occasionally beat my brothers and me far out of proportion to our offenses. This alienated us from him. Identification was lost. Still, I think those incidents could have been overcome had he been able to establish a healthy emotional bond with his sons. He was getting there when his life was cut short in an accident.

Why did that state of affairs not lead me into the homosexual world when so many in my situation have gone that way? Early heterosexual exposure, as mentioned above, is certainly part of it. A powerful, life altering encounter with Christ, where I submitted my will to his and promised to obey him no matter the cost was foundational as well. The rest I attribute to a specific answer to prayer. I lost my Dad when I was not quite sixteen. That loss launched me into a period of great emotional insecurity. Over the course of the twenty years following God provided a series of healthy, responsible, godly and mature men with whom I could identify and bond, who modeled healthy manhood for me, and who affirmed me. They gave me what I needed to become the man I am today.

If you’ve read this far then please stick with me a little while longer because I want to affirm you. If you feel different from most of the boys and young men around you, if you seem to be attracted to other young men instead of young women, if you are wondering what might be the matter with you, you are not alone and you are not gay. Even if your first sexual experiences have been homosexual and you feel that powerful chemically based pull toward that life, you are not bound to it. You can be free. Jesus Christ can set you free and can give you the strength that you need to change. He can empower you to resist the urges that you feel and bring the chemicals raging within you back under control. He can reshape your mind so that you can begin to see his world and his creation from his point of view. He can help you become the man that you were meant to be.

I stand ready to help you. There are other men in the church I lead who will do the same. Please contact us through our website http://www.fccsobo.org and we will help you find the support that you need to build a life of blessing.

Thank you for reading. My deepest prayer is that I have encouraged you and given you hope. If I have offended I apologize in advance and trust that you understand that I have written out of desire to help and a conscience bound by Christ to speak his hope into our world.

ON MY THIRD LIFE

The glory of young men is their strength,
gray hair the splendor of the old. Prov. 20:29

“I’m going to dye my hair. I think I’ll go with blonde, since that’s what it was when I was a little guy.”

After they finished laughing, my wife and daughter said, “No! You have beautiful grey hair.” And “What’s the matter? Oh, it happened again didn’t it?”

“Yeah, the lady at Bojangles gave me a Senior Discount, and she didn’t even card me!”

On the bright side, at least I still have most of my hair, which is more than I can say for some of my friends. And the episode made me think again of what it’s like to be on my third life.

Before you assume that I’ve adopted some form of Hinduism, allow me to explain. Think of your first twenty years or so as your first life. You have time to grow up, learn the basics, develop a few skills, maybe get some education and a driver’s license, but that’s about it.

Your second life happens between about twenty and forty. You finish your formal education, get married, and start a career, maybe two or three. You add children to the mix, a home, a mortgage, some pets, join a church or social or professional organizations. The education, career, and marriage choices you made in your teens and twenties reveal their inherent opportunities and limits. You are either happy or frustrated with them. If you’re happy, you buy life insurance. If you’re frustrated you get divorced.

If you are a winner on the Life Insurance Actuarial Lottery your third life runs from fortyish through sixtyish. Life speeds up as your body slows down. The kids you coached in soccer are now the nurses taking care of you during the appendectomy. You are making more money than you were in your twenties but most of it is obligated and doesn’t last long in your wallet. You are reaping the harvest, whether good or bad, of the choices you made and the habits you developed in your first and second lives.

But something else is happening too, a strange sense of detachment, coupled with a bit of Déjà vu. You recognize yourself and some of your friends in children on their first lives, even more in the adults on their second. Patterns emerge, predictable cycles born of similar circumstances intersecting unconscious habits of heart and mind, compounded by the sin nature or else corrected by the Living Spirit. Often it speeds by like a rain-flooded stream, but you can see it, you can see the patterns.

That’s where we third-lifers become useful to the first and seconds. We can help them see the patterns, find the fault-lines, identify the Spirit’s path, and choose carefully. It isn’t because we’re better educated, or more intelligent. It’s just because we’ve lived with Christ long enough for our hair to turn gray.

So, to those of you on your third (or fourth, or fifth!) life I say: Don’t be afraid to share your mistakes or to give God glory where he showed you how to succeed. And to those on your first or second, don’t be too proud to ask and listen.

JUST A WEDDING

It happened again this week, in conversation with a cherished friend. We reflected on the power of a simple wedding service to move the heart, to heal, to anchor the spirit to the deeper reality of which we all are part but see only “as through a glass, darkly.” Our thoughts mingled with memories of the weddings I performed earlier this month and weddings past; of tears springing from timeless wells, of longing and of joy, of fulfillment and of hope. Why do weddings move us so?

Why, especially, in this moment of cultural upheaval, when ancient ways are being scavenged for ornaments to decorate our ceremonies, while the ancient truths that birthed them are dragged like worn-out ships to the wrecking yards?

I tried to capture it in a poem composed for one of the ceremonies. Understand please that I am not a freckle on the nose of a real poet. But those feelings we experience in a Christian wedding have a basis in spiritual reality, a foundation in the unseen world that calls to us like nothing else. I hope you can hear that call in these few stanzas of sad verse.

It is the oldest story in the oldest book
How God came down and from the ground
A man and woman took
And made them one
In flesh and soul
First parents of all men
T’was in the garden, free and sweet
It all began back then.

All down the ages
All through the book
The wedding song was sung
But no one knew the deeper truth
Until we met the Son
And saw the sacrifice he made
And heard his joyful cry
“It is finished!” Price is paid
On the Cross he died.

Death could not hold
Grave could not keep
The Groom of which we sing
He rose again and left this place
To come back with a ring
To claim his bride
And take her home
His Kingdom hers to share
Oh glorious feast, oh glorious day
When we meet him there.

So there’s no such thing
As “just a wedding”
Nor “just a bride and groom”
But memories deep as Eden
And echoes from the empty tomb
Laughter from the halls of heaven
Dancing to the drum
Invitation from the King
Whoever will, may come!

Mike&Dane's las tride Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. (Heb 12:1 NIV)

Nitrogen fumes from the Shell premium gas Mike burned in his Honda CBR 1100 XX motorcycle drifted back to us, threading their way into our helmets along with the mountain aromas of cool granite, green laurel and fresh-cut grass. Family friend Jessica McGill and I kept pace with Mike and my daughter Mikeala on a borrowed BMW, railing the tight curves and slowing to a walk on the one hundred and eighty degree switchbacks of Georgia SR 180 as we wound our way up Brasstown Bald, the highest point in the State. It would be our last motorcycle ride together before he died on August 5th – and one of the best – climaxing as it did with a view of the world from 4,784 feet above sea level. He had already covered 200 of the 350 miles he would ride that day and wasn’t even tired. It stands as a metaphor to me of an even greater climb that the big guy made.

My older brother Mike, Uncle Fuzzball to my daughters, suffered from a chemical imbalance in his brain diagnosed as atypical bipolar disorder. In the mid nineties I watched this disease grab him like the imaginary monsters of childhood, shake him like a ragdoll and fling him to the ground.

Big Mike, his nickname in the neighborhood where I was born, stood over six feet tall from the time he was twelve years old. He was always bigger and stronger than me and most of my friends. He was also a spiritual rock for me when I needed him most. Watching him break into a thousand mental pieces was almost more than I could bear. But watching him climb up out of that psychological black hole, a place from which few men return, was one of the most inspiring things I’ve ever witnessed. We talked about writing a book on it. I’m writing this today to encourage you and anyone else that you know who suffers from a mental disorder.

Mike’s climb back up the mountain toward mental health was marked by three things. The first was humility. He was a proud man, a strong man that submitted himself to hospitalization under the care of competent, professionals who prescribed medication and psychotherapy. Once out of the hospital Mike took responsibility for himself and worked the program. It took years. And like many bi-polar patients, along the way Mike decided he no longer needed the meds. This led to a relapse and another hospital stay. But the second time was the charm. He humbled himself by taking his medicine every day and visiting a counselor every week for years. Even when he no longer needed the counselor he stayed on the medicine and visited a therapist now and then just to keep a check on himself. He knew the monster all too well and as strong as he was knew he couldn’t handle it alone.

The second thing was his faith. In all the years of his suffering Mike never turned his back on Jesus Christ. I never heard him blame God or use his illness and disappointment as an excuse to quit worshipping or neglect his devotions or stop meeting with other believers. He wanted to be well and he knew that in the end, only walking with Jesus would give him the strength to get there.

The third thing that characterized his recovery was perseverance. Sadly, in twenty years of ministry I’ve known a lot of people who’ve given up, wallowing in the slough of self-pity, and let their illness define them for the rest of their days. Mike never gave up. Even after two years of fruitless searching for a regular job, something that spins many men down into depression, he kept up his courage. He was as healthy on that day at the top of the world as I have ever known him, enjoying the good gifts God gave, enjoying the ride, and discussing plans for his new business. No one knew that even though his mind had healed his body was diseased. He was working on a motorcycle in his garage on the day his heart stopped.

So if you know someone who is struggling with a mental disorder tell them about my brother. Tell them they can recover. Tell them there’s a big guy in that great cloud of witnesses, cheering them on.RailingtheCherohala

THE FACEBOOK PROVERBS

Courtesy is the oil that lubricates the fine machinery of civilization. L. R. Barnard

I can see it now, an ad headline on Yahoo or Youtube: SECRET BIBLE CODE PREDICTS FACEBOOK SUCCESS! We are such suckers for looney lines like this that it would likely get a million clicks. The surprising thing is that the headline is true, from a certain point of view.

I discovered this by doing something else you will no doubt find looney: Reading Proverbs backwards.

Before you call for the guys in white jackets, let me explain. I read the Book of Proverbs through two or three times a year. Every time its accuracy and insight fascinates and instructs. But the phrases and cadences have become so familiar that I found I was just passing through, ignoring the scenery the way you do on an oft-traveled road. So I decided to read the book in reverse order. That’s when things started to pop, especially regarding FACEBOOK.

I am a daily FACEBOOK visitor. Sometimes it is a time waster. But other times it is, as it was designed to be, a great facilitator of relationships. Given the shredding of our sense of community in the last fifty years FACEBOOK, and mediums like it, is increasing our ability to know and understand one another across the artificial divides created by our suburbanized, isolated, hyper-mobile car-culture. It is the electronic front porch where neighbors stop briefly for a friendly chat, share helpful information, and strengthen the bonds of civilization. That’s a good thing, usually.

Then there’s the dark side of FACEBOOK, the crude comments, political rants, and thoughtless posts and re-posts that in a public setting, even with neighbors on one’s own front porch, we wouldn’t normally utter. FACEBOOK can’t recreate the proximity that prevents us from disgracing ourselves and as a result people have lost friends, jobs, opportunities, careers, and reputations, sometimes permanently. As a result most large employers now have strict social media rules in place and restrict access on their in-house networks.

That’s why THE FACEBOOK PROVERBS are so important. They were written long ago for a people trying to achieve honorable community in the land of Israel. Their composer and compiler, Solomon, was one of the most wise and successful leaders who ever lived. Using them as a guide to all of our social posts will help us achieve that rarest of cultural commodities: courtesy. They are marked in the margin of my Bible with a large F and now that this post has grown so long I will only share a few in hopes that they will whet your appetite to look for more. You will be amazed at how relevant they are.

A fool finds no pleasure in understanding
but delights in airing his own opinions. Pr. 18:2

A fool’s lips bring him strife,
and his mouth invites a beating.
A fool’s mouth is his undoing,
and his lips are a snare to his soul.
The words of a gossip are like choice morsels;
they go down to a man’s inmost parts. Pr. 18:6-8

Before his downfall a man’s heart is proud,
but humility comes before honor.
He who answers before listening—
that is his folly and his shame. Pr. 18:12-13

The first to present his case seems right,
till another comes forward and questions him. Pr. 18:17

From the fruit of his mouth a man’s stomach is filled;
with the harvest from his lips he is satisfied.
The tongue has the power of life and death,
and those who love it will eat its fruit. Pr. 18:20-21

One last one is not from The Book of Proverbs but from the late L. R. Barnard, professor of Historical Theology:

Cultivate courtesy gentlemen; it is the oil that lubricates the fine machinery of civilization.

Now, I wonder how many clicks this title will get. 

NOAH STILL SPEAKS

It’s amazing how well an atheist movie director can preach when he has the right story to tell.

I say that because of something my dearest professor, L. Reginald Barnard, taught us in seminary in the 1980s. “Preach the great themes of salvation gentlemen. Topical preaching is mostly psychology, which we love today, but the great themes of salvation are eternal.” That’s what struck me when I watched Darren Aronofsky’s NOAH: It preached the themes and it preached them well.

I liked the movie on many levels. If you think thematically there is much to like. If you want a platform from which to launch a great discussion on the nature of man and the justice and mercy of God, Aronofsky & company just gave it to you.

If however you want a literal retelling (that probably wouldn’t have sold tickets to a secular audience) then this is not your film.

Here’s a checklist of theological themes that the movie gets right: God’s good creation – check; Adam & Eve’s ability to choose – check; The fall – check; The depravity of man – check, check, check; The image of God in man – check; Justice – check; Mercy – check; Redemption – check; Love – check; Providence – check; The certainty of judgment for man’s evil – check; The importance of generational blessing – check; Miracles in service of salvation – check; The dignity of righteousness – check; The preservation of a righteous remnant (Noah’s family as the re-birth of the human race) – check. There may be more that I missed.

I also appreciated how Aronofsky & company answered some of the questions of the curious: like how the ark got built, how the animals stayed calm in the ark and what the Nephilim might have been (good old Industrial Light and Magic comes through again). Yes, they took literary license to create dramatic tension, but none of that diminished the power of the great themes.

As with any film of a Bible story, there were some problems. Here’s a checklist of things they got wrong or left out: Man’s dominion over the animals and the command that they are for our food (they put this in the mouth of the bad guy); The sacrifice of thanksgiving after the flood is missing; Noah’s confusion about his family’s role in the new world; Ham as a kind of Edmund Pevensy character (see Narnia); God’s covenant with Noah is illustrated (see rainbow) but not explained.
Most of all I identified with Noah as a man of God trying with all of his might to do the right thing and wondering if he had failed God, wondering if he had erred on the side of mercy, or justice. That was very powerful, very moving. I know, I know, it isn’t in the text. It is literary license. But any pastor worth his salt will tell you he has struggled with the same things.

Bottom line: NOAH gets most of the themes right. It is, as a Facebook friend has said, “a thinking man’s movie,” and well worth your time and money.

REALITY BITES TV PREACHER

In Atlanta in the early nineties I served on staff in one of the largest churches in America, with over 8000 members at the time. I was not a pastor but a fleet maintenance manager and technician. The church had over two hundred people on staff and, as with any large organization, had its share of drama both tragic and comic. Imagine five guys in uniforms chasing the Atlanta Passion Play’s starring donkey down a busy four-lane in rush hour traffic and you’ll get the picture. I always thought it would make a great sitcom.

Enter the Reality TV phenomenon and shows like “The Preachers of LA” and “Snake Salvation.”  Now I’m not so sure making television out of church life, at least some church life, is such a good idea. When the theology on such shows is skewed it leads at best to confusion and at worst to derision of the Gospel. What happened last weekend is a case in point. Sadly, the lead character on “Snake Salvation,” Jamie Coots, died Saturday after refusing to be treated for a snake bite. He probably thought it would be a lack of faith to seek treatment. His theology was based at least in part on Mark 16:17-18 which reads:

“These signs will accompany those who have believed: in My name they will cast out demons, they will speak with new tongues;
they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

These verses are part of a larger passage, verses 9-20, that concludes Mark’s gospel. Historical and grammatical evidence indicate that Mark actually concluded his gospel at verse 8, and that this passage, while authentic to the history of the Church, was added sometime before 100 AD to round off the narrative. How are we to understand this passage and more importantly, how have people like Mr. Coots misunderstood it?

You’ve already noticed that it is verses 17-18 that cause the problems. Some believers take these verses in a woodenly literal fashion, as if every Christian was supposed to speak in tongues, every Christian was supposed to be invulnerable to snakebite, and so on. When they can’t speak in tongues, don’t see healings, or get bitten and die people become skeptical. It’s confusing, so let’s break it down a bit.

First, when you read Mark 16:9 -20 and recall the accounts in the other gospels and parts of Acts, you realize that the writer is giving a short summary of a number of different events that happened in the early Church. In verses 12-13 for example, he summarizes the Emmaus road experience in Luke 24:13-35. Verse 14 is a summary of John 20:19-29 and so on. All of these events are “historically authentic and are part of the New Testament canon.”  In the same way, verses 17-18 of Mark 16 summarize some things that had already happened in the Church as the gospel spread across the Roman Empire. Paul was bitten by a snake and lived, people did speak in tongues, some laid hands on the sick and they got well, and demons were driven out of others. Nowhere in the NT is it reported that someone drank deadly poison and lived. But that doesn’t mean it never happened. Probably some Christian under persecution was forced to drink poison and, like Paul, didn’t die. It just happened too late to be reported in Acts. Looking at it that way there is nothing wrong with these verses and no reason to doubt what they say.

Second, the problem comes when someone wants to say that certain events and special signs are normal for every Christian, everywhere, for all time. All of us who lived through what was known as the Charismatic renewal movement of the 1960’s-80’s have seen the exercise, or the attempted exercise of the supernatural “sign” gifts, in ways that are outside the bounds which the Apostle Paul laid down for us in 1 Corinthians 12-14. Sometimes it’s harmless and well-meaning emotionalism. But I have seen these activities used by wicked men to manipulate gullible people. God will judge such people severely. (See Acts 8:18-24; Acts 13:4-12; Matt. 18:6).

Third, I believe God does still use miraculous “sign” gifts, but he gives them to glorify himself and authenticate the message, not to test our faith or to make a TV star out of a given messenger. Missionaries in remote places (and sometimes not so remote) report all kinds of marvelous things that we have no reason to doubt and that bring people struggling to believe to full and life-changing faith in Christ. But those gifts are given at God’s discretion, not upon our demand.

Finally, Mr. Coots and others failed to do proper exegesis and understand the Greek grammar in Mark 16:17-18. John D. Grassmick, Professor of New Testament at Dallas Theological Seminary explains. “In the Greek the first two clauses in Mark 16:18 may be understood as conditional clauses with the third clause as the conclusion. An interpretive rendering would be, ‘And if they be compelled to pick up snakes with their hands and if they should be compelled to drink deadly poison, it shall by no means  harm them.” (From The Bible Knowledge Commentary. Emphasis mine).

We can draw two conclusions from this. First, no one has to authenticate their faith by picking up a deadly snake, drinking poison, speaking in tongues, or miraculously healing a sick person. And second, God has graciously provided us with all kinds of help to understand his Word and navigate this life, including medical doctors and Greek scholars. It’s a tragedy that Mr. Coots allowed himself to die when basic medical help was at hand. It’s even sadder that he ignored the basics of Biblical interpretation.