Monthly Archives: July 2016

Bible

It’s Not Ranting. It’s Hope.

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I pulled this quote from the Shout Your Abortion website: “If you know more than three women, you likely know someone who has had an abortion. We are your sisters, your bosses, your daughters, and your friends. But you don’t know our stories because those working to eliminate our rights have demonized us. Because of this, many of us have chosen to hide or have been deeply harmed by shame.”

I hear and/or read this claim (the demonizing part) all the time. However, I personally do not see this. I am able to admit that I may not be “able” to hear or see it since I’m a guy. I can also admit I am not the best read person in the world. As well, perhaps I just don’t have large enough social circles. However, I doubt these cover the whole of the absence. I am the first to denounce the wayward antics of people like Westboro Baptist Church, but surely you cannot think they actually speak for my Savior or the real church. And, of course, the rantings of some who make vulgar, filthy language raids in comment sections, while egregious and hateful, don’t represent anyone I’ve read lately or anyone I know that has any public clout at all.

So, respectfully, for those of you I know, love, admire, yet disagree with, could I ask you to point me to sources where you find those who “have demonized” women. If they are in my “camp” I’d like an opportunity to pray about it and perhaps offer an olive branch.

As I wait, consider this…this is the biblically informed message I hope my camp is sharing…

As an advocate for the suffering, if I removed my breath from the plight of the border-crossing crisis impacting thousands of helpless children in the American southland, from third-world starvation, from the memory and lingering effects of slavery, from the memory and lingering effects of women’s suffrage, from the memory and lingering effects of the holocaust, from inner city and rural decay leaving children at risk, from the senseless brutality of driving-under-the-influence, from the horrors of human trafficking, and from the billions who have yet to have the wonder of learning about God’s love for them, most would cry foul. So hear me when I say I and those I know find no discrepancy between these messages of hope and our prolife hopes. We’re not interested in name calling. All we want to convey is this…In all cultures and through all of time those who have made sacrifices on behalf of the defenseless and less fortunate have been called heroes. Laying aside one’s own drive for self-preservation and self-fulfillment for the hopes and benefits of the defenseless brings out the honor of one’s soul. Mom and Dad, please, may we help you see this is what your baby and the world needs from you. Be a hero.

 

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Bible

I’m Voting With Mother Teresa

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Over and over the debate is heard among those who cannot decide whether or not they will vote Republican this time around. For me the decision is quite easy. While I am neither republican nor democrat and while you will often hear me saying or find me writing, “Please, please do not take your marching orders from the left or the right. Look instead to the one who is perfectly balanced. His name is Jesus.” This time around, in this year’s national election my vote will go to the right. Why? Simply because I plan to take a chance that Trump will stand by his word regarding pro-life issues. I’ve done so with others many times in both state and federal elections. I’ve been let down way more often than not, yet I must continue to give voice to the helpless. In this year’s election we have on the one hand a candidate who promises more and more and more money and more and more and more expansion for pro-abortion causes and on the other hand another candidate who says otherwise. Simple logic dictates my choice. This is way more than the “lesser of two evils” argument. It’s not a vote for a presidential candidate. It’s a vote of hope, be it ever so small, on behalf of the littles. I can do no other.

I agree completely with Mother Teresa who said in her 1979 Noble Peace Prize Acceptance Speech:

“…And I feel one thing I want to share with you all, the greatest destroyer of peace today is the cry of the innocent unborn child. For if a mother can murder her own child in her womb, what is left for you and for me to kill each other? Even in the scripture it is written: Even if mother could forget her child – I will not forget you – I have carved you in the palm of my hand. Even if mother could forget, but today millions of unborn children are being killed. And we say nothing. In the newspapers you read numbers of this one and that one being killed, this being destroyed, but nobody speaks of the millions of little ones who have been conceived to the same life as you and I, to the life of God, and we say nothing, we allow it. To me the nations who have legalized abortion, they are the poorest nations. They are afraid of the little one, they are afraid of the unborn child, and the child must die because they don’t want to feed one more child, to educate one more child, the child must die.

And here I ask you, in the name of these little ones, for it was that unborn child that recognized the presence of Jesus when Mary came to visit Elizabeth, her cousin. As we read in the gospel, the moment Mary came into the house, the little one in the womb of his mother, lift with joy, recognized the Prince of Peace. And so today, let us here make a strong resolution, we are going to save every little child, every unborn child, give them a chance to be born. And what we  are doing, we are fighting abortion by adoption, and the good God has blessed the work so beautifully that we have saved thousands of children, and thousands of children have found a home where they are loved, they are wanted, they are cared. We have brought so much joy in the homes that there was not a child, and so today, I ask His Majesties here before you all who come from different countries, let us all pray that we have the courage to stand by the unborn child, and give the child an opportunity to love and to be loved, and I think with God’s grace we will be able to bring peace in the world.”

When the accusations of “simplistic, one issue voting” are leveled, I will accept one of them, but not the other. One issue? Perhaps. Simplistic? Only the mindless or discompassionate could think so.

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Bible, Hate speech

An Alarming Trend…that may bring opportunity.

News from across the Big Eastern Pond is no longer as startling and surprising as it may have been a few years ago. Still it’s alarming, since lately the USofA seems to take all her marching orders for social structure from Europe. In an article (see link below), from The HeraldScotland, a visiting youth choir from Texas is denounced for being a mouth-piece of a mega-church with intentions for “pushing their extremely fundamentalist agenda.”

While the intolerant and hateful characterization offered by one of the folks interviewed in this article is the alarming part, there is some truth found here. The church is different. It must be different, because much of the world loves many things God calls evil. Running from this truth in an attempt to be relevant only causes the church to become irrelevant regarding the love, mercy, and justuce of the Lord. Of course many, like the individual quoted in this article, believe the evangelical church by nature looks like Westboro Baptist Church, but they are wrong. They may not know they are wrong, still that is their perception. In reality, the real church looks nothing like Westboro. Instead, like the Savior, the real church will offer both truth and love. It will remain high on both relationship and conversation. It will recognize that much that passes for compassion these days is hateful and harmful. However, it will not say so through clenched fists and angry lips. Rather, it will imitate the Lord’s question and advice on behalf of a lady being tormented by haughty men. After pointing out the wayward and selfish intentions of the men, Jesus stood up and asked, “Lady, where are your accusers? Is there now none?’ She replied, ‘No one, Lord.’ And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I accuse you. Go and sin no more.'” Of course, the last five words will always cause an uproar these days. For those swept up in that uproar, I offer a challenge: do some old fashioned homework…find out what that word “sin” meant in the original language and context. To those in the pro-Jesus movement I also offer a challenge: remember the true wonder and beauty of the Lord’s ways travel with our hands and feet and lips as we engage others with both light and love…our worldview is neither left nor right, but biblical.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14612475.US_youth_choir_linked_to_anti_gay_church__says_Scottish_Secular_Society/

 

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Bible

Thoughts About Dallas Et. Al.

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A week tucked away in the country at Camp Morrow on the eastern side of Mt Hood sharing God’s message of love ended spectacularly. God moved! Lives changed! Love wins! Then, early this morning, I asked if anyone had news from the “outside world.” Nothing. There was no TV, no internet, etc.

Now, sitting at a road side rest stop on my drive home, I feel the sting of the fall once again. Deciding to check the news I was slammed with the horror of more death. So here I sit between the Mountain of the Light of Life and the Valley of the shadow of death. On one hand I witnessed the miracle of God’s love…on the other hand I witness the terror of evil…and this one thing I know…I will pray and preach and scratch and claw til my dying breath to proclaim “There is no salvation to the left, there is no salvation to the right, there is only salvation on the narrow way that leads straight to the everlasting arms.” Well do I know the sting of evil that brings brutal, premature death and wrecked lives. Yet better still do I know the balm of love that brings eternal, mature life and hopeful hearts. Please please come out from the false hopes of the right and left and walk upon the Way.

There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death. Proverbs 14:12

Jesus: I am the way and the truth and the life. John 14:6

 

 

 

 

 

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