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DIRGES, DANCES, DRINKING AND DEMONS: Why Trying to Fit In Doesn’t Work

One of the sayings of Jesus has stimulated my thinking lately about how difficult it is to be a Biblical Christian in the age of “tolerance.” Jesus Christ, the ultimate author and subject of the Bible, calls us to believe certain things and to live according to certain values. Doing that inevitably puts us in conflict with the values of the world around us. The whole “gay marriage” debate comes to mind (about which I plan to write later this summer). But that isn’t the only area of disagreement between Biblically faithful Christians and the rest of the world. The pre-abortion sonogram debate that recently raged in the Virginia Legislature is another example. Christian high school students who choose to live virtuously, who reject the “party lifestyle” stay well clear of drugs and alcohol, and otherwise behave themselves often become the butt of jokes and the targets of ostracism. Christian business men and women that choose to live and operate in truth also suffer for it. It’s just part of the reality of following Christ in a sinful world.

The problem is the pressure it creates to conform, to somehow change the message, to alter our lifestyle in order to appease. It’s a powerful temptation. We are social creatures. No one likes being rejected. So we think, “I’ll just adjust a little. I won’t abandon my faith or adopt worldliness. I’ll just keep quiet, do my best to fit in, live and let live and try to get these people to like me.”

The problem with that approach is that Jesus has already proved it doesn’t work. This is what he said to his generation.

"To what, then, can I compare the people of this generation? What are they like? They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling out to each other: "'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not cry.' For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, 'He has a demon.' The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, 'Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and "sinners." 'But wisdom is proved right by all her children." (Luke 7:31-35 NIV)

Translation? When people have decided to reject God in their lives it really doesn’t matter who carries God’s message or what his or her style may be, the people will find fault with the messenger.

So here’s the deal: Are you trying your best to live for Christ in a fallen world and finding it difficult? Are you doing your best to be friendly and kind and loving and truthful and experiencing rejection anyway? Don’t take it personally. Don’t change your style. It isn’t about you (the messenger). It’s about the message and the God behind it. Trust him. Live in the freedom and love of his grace. The wisdom of walking with God will be vindicated in the end.

THE CRISIS OF FAITH

There is an old story; I forget where I first heard it, about a gathering of people listening to recitations of the 23rd Psalm. One man everyone wanted to hear recite was a well known actor with a deep melodious voice. He wasn’t a particularly spiritual man but he appreciated the Psalm and was happy to comply. He stood and delivered it beautifully and everyone was duly impressed. But then a very old gentleman, one with no real skill at public speaking but a man whom everyone respected, was also urged to recite. He slowly rose to his feet and in a quiet voice quoted the Psalm from memory. As he spoke a hush fell over the room, a silence and peace no one wanted to disturb even after he sat down. Finally the actor spoke the truth everyone knew: “I know the Psalm. He knows the Shepherd.”

Over the years I’ve come in contact with many people who are like the actor in the story. They say things like this: “I’ve read the Bible. The teachings of Jesus are brilliant. I like the idea of going to heaven when I die. As far as religion is concerned I check the “Christian” box on official forms. But this whole idea of a relationship with God is beyond me. I know other people experience it. I believe they are genuine. But I don’t seem to be able to have it myself. I have a lot of doubts.”

I was thinking about friends like that – wondering and praying about how I could help them find what was missing - when, in my regular reading, I came to Luke 5:1-11. It’s the story of the calling of the first disciples. Jesus is seated in Simon’s boat, teaching. He finishes, turns to Simon and says, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.”

Now Simon was an experienced fisherman, a concrete, rational business man if there ever was one. He was also tired. He and his partners had fished all night without a catch. He was also proud and very self-sufficient, as later episodes would show. He had every reason ignore Jesus' suggestion. What Jesus was asking wasn’t rational. Peter could have cited a dozen reasons why it wouldn’t work.

But here’s the thing, it wasn’t about the fish. It was about Peter’s faith. Jesus was precipitating a crisis in Peter’s life, purposefully, intentionally, meaningfully pushing him to choose between Peter’s will, Peter’s intelligence, Peter’s experience and knowledge and Jesus’ command. The question was not really: would they catch any fish? The question was: would Peter obey?

Peter did obey and the rest, as they say, is history. They caught so many fish that the boats began to sink. But again, it isn’t about the fish. It’s about what happened inside of Peter. “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” he said. In other words, Peter now knew Jesus on a whole new level, knew Jesus as God’s anointed, because when the crisis came to choose obedience over experience, to put Jesus will over Peter’s, Peter in faith obeyed. Life was never the same for Peter after that day.

The ability to experience a living relationship with God through his Son Jesus Christ and by the presence of the Holy Spirit within does not depend on a blind leap of faith, far from it. It depends on how we respond to Jesus when he calls us to that moment of crisis. And call he will. Perhaps he already has in your life. Perhaps you’ve had many crises with Jesus and, like the rich young ruler in another story, “went away very sad…” without submitting, never knowing the incredible peace and power that comes from a relationship with God. My prayer for you is that the next time he brings you to that moment of crisis you will like Peter obey. I promise you, your life will never be the same.

SUBTLE DECEPTION

"Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak." (Jesus, Matt 26:41 NIV)

The February 26, 1974 edition of Insight Magazine told the story of Major William Martin, a British subject who is buried near Huelva on the southern coast of Spain. Martin never knew the great contribution he made to the Allied success in the Second World War, especially in Sicily, because he died of pneumonia in the foggy dampness of England before he ever saw the battle front. The Allies had invaded North Africa. The next logical step was Sicily.

Knowing the Germans calculated this, the Allies determined to outfox them. They decided to give the Germans exactly what they wanted, accurate intelligence on the allied assault plan. Thus: Operation Mince Meat.

One dark night, an Allied submarine came to the surface just off the coast of Spain and put Martin's body out to sea in a rubber raft with an oar. In his pocket were secret documents indicating the Allied forces would strike next in Greece and Sardinia. The Allies had calculated the tides and currents in the area and knew within reason where the raft would land.

Major Martin's body washed ashore, and Axis intelligence operatives soon found him, thinking he had crashed at sea. They passed the secret documents through Axis hands all the way to Hitler's headquarters. So while Allied forces moved toward Sicily, thousands and thousands of German troops moved on to Greece and Sardinia--where the battle wasn't.

That story is a good example of the subtle deceptions involved in temptation. Some observations:

First, temptation isn’t always obvious, doesn’t usually hit us in the face. It is more sophisticated than that. It typically presents itself as what we think we want or need. It comes to us in a crisis of desire or danger, when necessity is upon us and the stress we are under is overwhelming and we’re looking for the solution, the release, the escape, or the fulfillment all at the same time. The Axis needed inside information. The Allies gave it to them.

Second, temptation is rarely hasty. It is unhurried, like the sunrise. The realization that what it offers is there for us, that it’s what we’ve been looking for, isn’t immediate. It is rather a slow dawning, a gradual reduction of rational arguments against error and a slow but sure gathering of seemingly sane, balanced, coherent arguments for it. Little by little the unthinkable becomes the ordinary, reasonable answer to our problem. The information planted on Major Martin slowly made its way up the chain of command to Hitler’s headquarters. Each office that passed it on gave it one more stamp of validation.

Above all temptation feels right. It feels like the natural way out of a difficult, seemingly intractable situation. It feels like “the answer.” The doors are all open. The path is smooth. Cool waters beckon. We want it to be so. The Nazis wanted Greece secured. They wanted to believe what the information told them.

Finally, temptation always makes the alternatives seem harder. There is always another approach, another way to solve the problem or meet the need. But that way seems unnecessarily inflexible, difficult, demanding, more than our resources can handle. The Nazis knew they couldn’t cover both fronts effectively. They had to choose where to concentrate their resources. Operation Mincemeat made it easier to choose Greece.

These are the subtle deceptions of temptation. These are the things to watch for when we pray.

UNRAVELING THE MYTH OF THE TWO GODS

Last Sunday’s message from 2^nd Samuel 6 touched on the holiness of God expressed in judgment for irreverent acts. In that Old Testament story God struck down Uzzah for touching the Ark of the Covenant. In a similar story in the New Testament God struck down Ananias and Saphira for fraud in the Church (See Acts 5). This message understandably generated some questions about God and the gospel. One friend summed it up well, “I thought it was all about forgiveness, that God would forgive anything. So I’m having a hard time understanding. Can you explain?” I offered my friend a copy of Mart De Haan’s excellent article on the subject (reprinted at the end of this email). But I’d also like to add a few thoughts of my own.

The conventional wisdom has it that there are two Gods represented in the Bible: the Old Testament God of judgment and wrath and the New Testament God of love and forgiveness. A cursory reading of the two testaments would seem to support that idea. Global flooding, catastrophic plagues, Haiti-like earthquakes swallowing up offending people and fire falling from the sky on hapless sinners punctuates the Old Testament (OT) narrative. In the New Testament (NT) major sinners seem to catch a big break. Nothing bad happened to Pilate who caved to political pressure and crucified the innocent Jesus. Fraudulent tax men, prostitutes, adulterers and people who ignored the other ceremonial parts of the Mosaic Law were welcomed in Christ’s presence. Forgiveness full and free is proclaimed to all who believe in his name.

So what gives? Are there two Gods? Or are we missing something(s)?

One important thing to remember when reading the Old Testament is that the Bible is a progressive revelation. From Genesis to Malachi (the last book in the OT) and from Matthew to Revelation the story of God’s work of rescuing man from sin is moving toward a climax in the person of Jesus Christ (John 5:39). Each book tells us something that we didn’t know or illustrates an earlier teaching about the holiness, righteousness, and justice of God. But, as De Haan points out, the OT reveals the love and mercy of God every bit as much as it reveals his wrath. We just tend to forget those parts.

A second important thing to remember is that the New Testament reveals the wrath of God every bit as much as it reveals his love and mercy. De Haan mentions Jesus cleansing the temple. In Acts 12 Herod Antipas was struck down for taking praise that belonged to God alone. We’ve already mentioned Ananias and Sapphira. In Acts 13 Elymas the sorcerer is temporarily blinded for “perverting the right ways of the Lord.” Most telling, Jesus himself renders one of the most damning rebukes in the whole Bible against the sins of hypocrisy and violence in Matthew 23. And finally, the judgments and wrath foretold against all kinds of sin and unbelief in the last book of the New Testament totally eclipse anything seen in the Old Testament. The Revelation of Jesus Christ portrays the returning King of Creation with awesome terror.

He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. "He will rule them with an iron scepter." He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS. (Rev 19:13-16 NIV; See also 2 Peter 3:1-18)

If the wrath of God is revealed as clearly in the NT as in the OT then why aren’t we seeing more of it in the present?

That is the most important thing to remember: for everyone who believes, Christ has absorbed the wrath of God for all time. That is what makes God “just and the justifier of the unjust.” (Romans 3:22-26; Romans 5:8-9; 1 Thess. 1:8-10). He poured out his judgment and wrath on his own son so that those who put their hope in him may escape the wrath that will come (John 3:14-18). Until then our calling, the mission we have been given from God, is to tell everyone we can find that God loves them so much that he has made it possible to avoid judgment through faith in God’s son.

COURAGE IS CONTAGIOUS

On the eve of the battle of Jericho, God said to Joshua “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go." (Josh. 1:9 NIV)

Billy Graham once said: Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are stiffened.^[1]

And history confirms it. When David stood up to Goliath, all Israel stood up with him. When Churchill stood up to Hitler the world stood up with him. And when Rosa Parks stood up to racism, the United States stood up with her.

But you will recall that they didn’t stand right away. At least ten years passed before Israel overcame the Philistines with any finality. Churchill spoke against Hitler from the back bench of Parliament for six years before he became Prime Minister. It took another six to achieve final victory. Rosa Parks kept her seat on the bus on Dec. 1, 1955 and was arrested for it. The Civil Rights Act passed in July of 1964. It took a while for the courage of these leaders to become steel in the spines of their followers.

A courageous battle is now being fought by the defenders of life in the Virginia House of Delegates. It is the same battle that began with the Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade decision in 1973. Good people who are seeking to do what is right and just are being attacked and vilified by their opponents. They deserve our prayers and support. Please contact our delegate James Edmunds and tell him that you support the efforts to defend the defenseless in Senate Bill 484 now before the house. You can reach him through this link: http://www.friendsofjamesedmunds.com/index.php?option=com_contact&view=contact&id=1&Itemid=56

You too may be vilified if you support this. But be courageous. You are in good company.

---

[1] The Leadership Secrets of Billy Graham. By Harold Myra and Marshall Shelley.

GOOD GRIEF is a good book

It was February 10, 1976, very late in the day and Dad was overdue for dinner again. It was nothing new. His rather flexible notions of time management often made him late for dinner. Combining that trait with a bright blue sky, a seventy-five degree day and a friend that wanted to go flying with him made a missed dinner almost inevitable. Mom would keep his plate warm in the oven and we would eat without him.

That’s when the phone rang and we learned that we would from that day on always eat without Dad. His plane had spun out of an aerobatic maneuver into the ground and he was never coming home.

Life for the Skeltons would never be the same. Nothing could prepare us for it. But there is something that could have helped us deal with the aftermath better as the years went by. It is Granger E. Westberg’s excellent little book GOOD GRIEF. I read it while on vacation and want to recommend it to you.

Westberg was a pastor, a scholar, and a chaplain who served on the faculty of the University of Chicago Medical Center as well as the Divinity School in the 1950s and 60s. In that capacity he had great exposure to the causes and results of grief and summed up with deep wisdom and skill his findings in the short, thirty-two page book that has now sold over three million copies. He dealt not only with grief through death but also with the grief generated by all kinds of losses: divorce, being fired, moving, difficulties with children, the death of dreams and many other things.

As one of Westberg’s students, Dr. Timothy Johnson, M.D., says in his foreword to the fiftieth anniversary edition, Westberg wrote “with the heart of a pastor, the insight of a psychologist, the humanity of a father and husband, and the hope of someone who has seen so many survive the process of grieving. It is simple but not simplistic. It is profound but not professorial…it describes the pathway through grieving that can only be found through honesty.”

I hope to explore some of what Westberg explains in this column over the next few months. But the best thing I can recommend, if you have suffered a loss of any kind, is to buy it and read it. GOOD GRIEF is a good book.

RECOMMENDING THE SEA

Turmoil. Strife. Grief. Anxiety. Are you acquainted with any of these? Ah well, if you live on planet earth you will know them from time to time. How do you soothe them? Where do you find solace? Allow me to recommend the sea.

Few things soothe a soul like the sea. A trip to the coast is an opportunity to engage with God through the majesty of his creation on a level that is difficult to achieve in a neighborhood crowded with houses or even from a tree stand in quiet woods waiting for a big buck. The sea speaks with a voice unequaled by any other element except possibly the sky – but that is an article for another day.

Standing on the shore, facing out to sea feet planted inches from the breaking waves with the world of men behind and nothing but sun, sky and water before the disordered parts of your soul begin to settle down.

I think I know why. See if you agree.

The sea is expansive. It speaks of the omnipresence of God. It is massive, huge, immense, all encompassing, filling the field of view until it disappears over the horizon. The largest ships look like tiny toys across the distant waves.

The sea tells us nothing is too big for God. Nothing happens that is outside of his perception. Nothing happens in our life that is beyond his field of view.

The sea is constant, or more accurately, constantly in motion, ever moving yet never moved. It speaks of the unchanging God. The shore is never silent. Even on dead calm days the quiet lapping of water on sand or rock is present. It is unchallengeable, indisputable, unchanging. On stormy days it reminds us of our storm tossed lives. But even then it does not change. The waves gather and curl and crash into each other and finally spill themselves onto the sand to instantly disappear, their fury spent their conflict gone. So too our lives but the sea, the life upon which all other life depends, lives on.

God is constant. God does not change. Our lives toss about, curling and crashing into one another, spending our energies in furious conflict. And then they are gone, the fury spent, the conflict finished. But God remains. He is constant.

The sea is powerful. Its purposes are never thwarted. You can feel it standing there at the top of the tide. Your visceral senses tell you, “this thing can go where ever it wants and take you along with it.” When sun and sea, pressure and temperature meet in perfect hurricane pitch nothing can stand in its way. Only God is more powerful. He marks the boundaries of the sea. It travels not one inch further than he chooses. He gathers the waters of the sea into jars; he puts the deep into storehouses. (Ps 33:7 NIV)

The sea is majestically powerful. It speaks of the omnipotent God. Nothing he has called us to is too hard for him to help us with. Nothing can reach past the boundaries he places around our lives without his permission.

The seas have lifted up, O LORD, the seas have lifted up their voice; the seas have lifted up their pounding waves. Mightier than the thunder of the great waters, mightier than the breakers of the sea-- the LORD on high is mighty. (Ps. 93:3-4 NIV)
Turmoil, grief, strife, anxiety make the list longer if you want. I recommend the sea. Nothing is too big for God. Nothing changes God. Nothing is too powerful for God.

YOUR PLACE IN THE UNIVERSE

Col 1:16-17 For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Colossians 1: 16-17 NIV)

Have you ever considered your place in the universe?

Everyone that takes the time to reflect: to stand on the seashore and feel his own insignificance, to walk in the forest and be overwhelmed by the complexity and beauty of the natural world, to stand ant-like amidst the majesty of Yosemite Valley or the Grand Tetons knows the longing for transcendence. These places whisper to us: there is something more.

Why should we alone be the ones able to appreciate the grandeur? And why are we alone able to feel that longing and wonder where it comes from?

It’s because we are made “in the image” of the Logos, the great creative mind who brings order out of chaos, beauty from simplicity, and splendor out of rocks, trees, sky and sea.

Through him all things were made. And then he became what he made. What does that tell us about who we really are?

We are not the random combination of genetic material accidentally deposited on some airless planet without a dust mite’s chance of survival. We are the brilliant creations of a fantastically powerful and singularly purposeful God who wants to know us and be known by us.

You are not junk. No one is junk. You and everyone else you will ever meet are beings of incredible value. You long for transcendence when you visit the grand cathedrals of nature because you were composed by the transcendent One, made for a relationship with him, made to dwell in harmony with him in the world that he created for us to enjoy.

That relationship, the intimacy with transcendence that we all long for, was lost in the Garden of Eden, when our first parents rebelled. The way back to that it, the door to the grandest cathedral of them all, was reopened when the babe was born in Bethlehem.

What is our place in the universe? Our place is at the cradle. Our place is at the Cross, where the door to the throne room of God was reopened and his rebellious children were welcomed home.

HAVE A COSMIC CHRISTMAS

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. (John 1:1-4 NIV)

Scientists face what Charles W. Petit calls a ‘fine-tuning' problem as they analyze the heavens. "The universe appears marvelously constructed to produce stars, planets, and life. Scientists have calculated that if the force binding atomic nuclei were just 0.5 percent different, the processes that forge atoms inside stars would have failed to produce either carbon or oxygen—key ingredients to life. If gravity were only slightly stronger or weaker, stars like our sun could not have formed. Yet physicists see no reason why the constants of nature are set just so. (Charles W. Petit, "The gods must be crazy," U.S. News & World Report (9-8-03)

Contemporary astronomer Allan Sandage, Edwin Hubble's successor at Mt. Wilson and Mt. Palomar observatories... told the New York Times, "I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God, to me, … is the explanation of the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing." On another occasion, Sandage said, "If God did not exist, science would have to invent Him to explain what it is discovering at its core." (Breakpoint with Chuck Colson, 7/14/2003)

The truth is that our ability to exist on this planet is due to the fact that the universe is balanced on a razor’s edge in order to facilitate life.

The earth-shaking thing that the apostle John tells us in the first few verses of his gospel is that the cosmos (ho kosmos in Greek, the orderly universe that we observe) was made through THE WORD (ho Logos in Greek, the organizing principle or force of life). In other words, Jesus Christ balances the universe in his hand.

John is clearly stating that the ‘Logos’ – the ultimate spiritual force behind the universe – is responsible for all that is visible. The mud you squish between your toes, the cold morning air rushing at you as you go out to crank the car, the water running through your hair as you shower all were made by Him. The fact that you and I exist in an incredibly complex yet orderly universe designed to sustain life is because this same Logos – who existed before the universe began – made it so.

The point is that the Logos created everything we can see and everything that we cannot see. He created it, he sustains it, he owns it, he rules it, nothing happens in it apart from his knowledge, and nothing can change in it apart from his permission.

And then he became material himself, a human being, an infant, totally dependent, completely identified with his creation, circling the star that he had balanced in space. That is what we call the incarnation. And that is cause for celebration.

So don’t just hand out gifts this Christmas. Go outside. Look up at the stars. Contemplate all that you see. And have a Cosmic Christmas.

BEWARE BLACK FRIDAY

“Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” Jesus (Luke 12:15)

One of FCC’s regular attendees, who works in a well-known department store, mentioned something last Sunday that made me gasp. “I have to be at work at 2:00 AM next Friday morning.”

Then this morning, at the teen ministry I co-sponsor at the local middle school, one of the kids said, “I can’t believe it. My mom is waking me up at 1:00 AM Friday to go shopping!”

I confess that I am not a serious shopper. I know that it is sensible to try to save money by taking advantage of sales. But let’s be honest about this: Black Friday is a Greed Fest, a singularly American celebration of buying and selling that rivals any other holiday on the calendar. (Note: Holiday is a word derived from Holy Day – a special day for celebration of the deity). Our dedication to getting THE DEAL on the latest trendy toy or 4G gadget is so fanatical that we will stand in line in sub-freezing temperatures at two in the morning and then literally run over each other for the limited supply of DOOR BUSTING BARGAINS! (Lucky for you southerners this year, the temps will be mild).

Let’s not kid ourselves: this is worship. Worship includes sacrifice, adoration and celebration. Fanatical dedication to Black Friday shopping has all the ingredients. There is sacrifice: Can you remember the last time you got up at two in the morning to pray or give or serve or go to a worship service? There is adoration: “Wow! I’ve always wanted one of these!” And there is celebration: “Can you believe it? What a DEAL I got!” We don’t like to admit it but this kind of activity is what worship is made of. It is the great American sin that we never condemn. But the apostle Paul puts it right up there with the sins we do condemn.

Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these…( Col 3:5-8 NIV)

One day in the department store is no different from any other. Shopping on Friday is not a sin. Looking for bargains is not transgression. And if you are going shopping on Friday I hope you find what you’re looking for. But beware the ethos of Black Friday – the culture that celebrates the abundance of possessions as life’s highest good. There is much, much MORE to life than finding Friday’s best bargains.

HERMAN, JOE AND THE REST OF US

Deut 19:15 One witness is not enough to convict a man accused of any crime or offense he may have committed. A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. (NIV)

I’m a news junkie. I read two newspapers, two news magazines, and multiple news websites daily. So even though I would like to I can’t avoid seeing at least the headlines of some pretty scurrilous stuff. If it is shallow and salacious (read: Michael Jackson and Kim Kardashian) it gets skipped. But if it is serious it gets analyzed.

The allegations against Herman Cain are pretty serious stuff. Do we want a man like that, if he is like that, in the highest office in the land? And what about Penn State Coach Joe Paterno? Is he the icon of integrity that he has preached and promoted? Or is he a bum who sold out helpless kids in order to protect his football program?

Or is the truth about both men, both situations, something none of us really knows? I believe it is.

I had a taste, just a tiny taste once, of Washington Politics, and I saw the viciousness of those whose summum bonum is power. It would not surprise me to find that the charges against Cain are fabricated.

And I once had a good friend, a colleague in the church choir, who to my utter shock and surprise showed up on NBC’s “To Catch a Predator” clearly caught in the act of preying on teenage girls. I learned then the deceptive power of sexual predators. It would not surprise me to learn that Joe Pa was deeply deceived by his former apprentice.

That is why I wish, I wish very deeply, that the rest of us would take these kinds of situations – where careers, character, honor, and justice are concerned – as seriously as God takes them. Over and over again, the Spirit-inspired writers of scripture quote the command stated above: “Every matter must be established by two or three witnesses.” (Nu. 35:30; Dt. 17:6-7; Matt. 18:16; 1 Tim. 5:19). And that not in the media “mob”, which cares more about eyeball counts than impartiality, but in an orderly court of law. If we did that, if we took them as seriously as God takes them, we would grieve over the possibility that men could be guilty of such evil, we would pray more often to be delivered from it, and we would wait for truth to be established before we take up stones to throw.

DID DAVID AND JONATHON HAVE A HOMOSEXUAL RELATIONSHIP?

DID DAVID AND JONATHON HAVE A HOMOSEXUAL RELATIONSHIP?

By Dane Skelton

I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother; you were very dear to me. Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women.

"How the mighty have fallen! The weapons of war have perished!" (2 Sam 1:26-27 NIV)

Some people in the homosexual community have found in this passage (and others in 1 Samuel, see below) support for their lifestyle: that David and Jonathon had a homosexual relationship. It says something about the desperate need for validation in “gay” society that it would go to such lengths as to ascribe homosexual behavior to two of the most revered characters in scripture.

But the people who take that position are doing something that is called isogesis: Reading into a passage of scripture something that comes from your culture or point of view. I suppose all of us are guilty of that from time to time. But isogesis is always wrong and usually destructive to sound doctrine and healthy living. What we want to do instead is known as exogesis: Reading out of scripture what is actually there. Accurate exogesis, and therefore interpretation, takes into account the historical and cultural setting of the people in the story as well as its original readership, the vocabulary and grammar in use at the time, as well as the type of literature and its context. The goal is to understand what the writer actually said, what it meant to the first readers, and how that meaning translates to our time.

Here then is a brief exposition of 2 Samuel 1:26 with the earlier passages taken into account.

Vocabulary and Grammar - 2 Samuel 1:26 “Your love for me was wonderful…” – The standard Old Testament verb for sexual activity is ya-da (Note: I cannot reproduce the proper Hebrew punctuation marks). It is never used to describe the relationship between Jonathon and David. However, the Hebrew noun for love (ahaba, derived from the verb ahab) used in this sentence (and in 1 Samuel 18:3) is used about 55 times in the OT with a variety of meanings. It can mean the sexual love between a husband and wife. But it can also mean the love between a father and a son (as with Abraham and Isaac Gen. 22:2); the loyal love of a servant for his master when the servant refuses his freedom (Ex. 21:5); the love between two friends as with David and Jonathon etc. Ahab is also used in Leviticus 19:18 when God commands: “…love thy neighbor as thyself.” Finally, Dr. Bill T. Arnold, director of Hebrew studies and professor of Old Testament and Semitic languages at Asbury Theological Seminary explains the word “has important political and diplomatic connotations. Since David and Jonathon’s relationship has already been marked as a covenant sealed by their love (same word), this part of the poem is referring to the depth of that relationship.

Context – “…more wonderful than that of women.” ? How could David say that and not be referring to sex? Context is king in interpretation. The most significant thing to recognize about the context of this statement is David’s relationship to Saul’s daughter Michal. Whoever killed the giant Goliath was promised the king’s daughter in marriage (1 Samuel 17:5). That was a huge deal in that culture. (Imagine being engaged to Bill Gate’s daughter and you will get the idea). It meant wealth, power and security as part of the king’s family. But that deal didn’t work out very well for David. David did marry Michal. But Saul then gave her to another man when he became jealous of David and drove him out. Jonathon, on the other hand, made a covenant with David that he never broke, even at the risk of alienating his father the king. Little wonder then that David would refer to this noble trait in his friend on hearing of his death. Jonathon’s love was more wonderful than Michal’s.

Historical & Cultural setting – The homosexual culture, and our culture generally, tends to sexualize every relationship. Thus when we read 2 Samuel 1:26 or 1 Samuel 20:41 (…then they kissed each other and wept together) we think it was the affection of lovers instead of friends, Eros love versus Philos. Nothing could be further from the truth. Kissing between male friends and relatives was and remains a normal mode of Middle Eastern expression. On the other hand homosexual acts were universally condemned in Jewish law and culture. The laziest reading of 1 & 2 Samuel clearly reveals a writer (or writers) determined to portray David as the greatest hero Israel ever saw after Moses. It is inconceivable and totally out of sync with his purposes to depict his hero in a homosexual relationship.

Perhaps the saddest thing about this is that the relationship between David and Jonathon displays the noblest ideas of friendship, loyalty, mutual protection, mentoring and brotherly love. When it (along with other scriptures on this topic) is misinterpreted, as it has been in the homosexual community, it supplies a rationale for the exploitation of the innocent: young men, looking for affirmation and friendship, find themselves seduced into a world they never sought and robbed of the reasoned, Biblical arguments they need to escape.

I pray that this article will become a useful tool for you and for them.

CLARITY

Have you ever said something to someone and, having listened to their response, realized that they didn’t grasp the tenth part of what you were saying? Or felt like they weren’t listening?

Perhaps this is only common to preachers. After all, preaching, as they say, “is just talking in someone else’s sleep.” But I have a feeling that you know what I’m talking about, that you’ve experienced communication frustration. Where does it come from? Why is communication, especially communication about spiritual things, so difficult? Well before you take a mega phone to the next person that doesn’t listen consider a few things.

A friend who is an engineer for a large utility company tells me that when he had to hire some new engineers he required applicants to hand write sample repair instructions to a mechanic. Something like two out of ten could do it with any competence. Our education system is not what it used to be. More and more people are graduating from high school and even from college without the ability to communicate.

We are also in a much denser communication environment than ever before. Television segements and commercials are shorter and faster, cell phone calls and text messages come at us fast and furious, ipods, emails, pop-ups, dual screens – all of these technologies force feed us with hundreds more messages than earlier generations had to process, causing us to erect thicker message filters than we did forty or fifty years ago. We humans can only absorb so much information at a time. As a result, attention spans have shrunk. We are also becoming more reliant on pictures and music and less on words. We are a nation of receivers tuned to the elemental frequencies of image and melody. Language is becoming harder to digest.

But there is a third reason that people often cannot hear what we’re trying to say, especially if our message concerns the kingdom of God. Spiritual forces are at work. Consider Jesus and Paul’s comments on the matter:

Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. (Jesus in Mark 4:15 NIV)

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. (Paul in 2 Cor 4:3-4 NIV)

The ability to communicate clearly and powerfully is a skill that can be learned. But in the end only God can penetrate the darkness, the spiritual veil that covers the heart of men and women. So no matter whom you’re talking to or when, before you begin to speak, pray for the Lord of light to open the eyes and ears of the soul in your listeners. He alone has the power to make his light “shine in our hearts, to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Cor. 4:6).

Dad Is a Powerful Word

Dad is a powerful word, because Fathers are molders of young lives.

I once asked a violent friend what he remembered about his father, who had died when my friend was only twelve. He said, “I remember a loud, angry spanking machine.”

In Ramsey Count, Minnesota, ninth and tenth graders were interviewed about their dads. They were asked this question: "What comes to mind when you think of the word 'dad'?" Answers came from both ends of the spectrum. One end of the spectrum said, "I think of the word jerk." Others thought of the words angry, mad, and absent.

On the other hand, some of the young people said, "I think of wholeness, kindness, security, safety." Dad is an immensely powerful word.

Isa 64:8 says: O LORD, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. (NIV).

Dad we are the potters in our children’s lives. So we need to be careful how we shape that clay. One of the ways to do that is to catch them doing something right.

Do you ever catch your teen doing something right? Or do you only call out the infractions?

One teen was always in trouble at school, so when his parents received one more call to come in and meet with his teacher and the principal, they knew what was coming. Or so they thought.

The teacher sat down with the boy's father and said, "Thanks for coming. I wanted you to hear what I have to say."

The father crossed his arms and waited, thinking, “What can I say this time?” The teacher proceeded to go down a list of ten things—ten positive affirmations of the junior high "troublemaker." When she finished, the father said, "What else? Let's hear the bad stuff."

"That's all I wanted to say," she said.

That night when the father got home, he told his son what he had heard. And not surprisingly, almost overnight, the troublemaker's attitude and behavior changed dramatically. All because a teacher looked past the negatives.^[1]

Colossians 3:21 says “Fathers, do not exasperate your children; that they may not lose heart.” Sometimes that means, catch them doing something right.

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[1] Citation: Bonne Steffen, editor of Christian Reader; true story from a Florida Christian school; source: Peter Lord, former pastor of Park Avenue Baptist Church, Titusville, Florida

A Pilot Paul from Papua story

How ironic that the day after I posted an article on a man with fifty mishap-free years as a professional pilot my equally professional pilot friend Paul Westlund, who had over 11,000 hours of experience flying in the most difficult aviation environment in the world, would lose his life along with his two passengers in a crash in the mountains of Papua, Indonesia. He was on what amounted to a “milk run.” A full investigation into the cause is underway.

Paul was laid to rest yesterday and all of Papua mourned. He was beloved by the people he served. He and I were nearing completion of a book on his adventures as a mission aviator. In honor of my friend I post here today one of his first stories. Please take the time to read it and contemplate the life of this great servant of God. DTS.

LOSING MY PROFESSIONAL PILOT FACE
By Paul Westlund, with Dane Skelton
Papua, Indonesia. Spring 1987

The apostle Paul once wrote to his protégé Timothy, “Keep your head in all situations…” That is good advice for anyone but especially for bush pilots. Our “situations” often run from the super serious to super comical in a single day, as my first flight with a translator revealed.

The path from student pilot to mission aviator is a long and difficult one. Mine had taken ten years of hard work from the first flights with Moody Aviation School all the way through eighteen hundred hours of flying experience to the Airline Transport Pilot rating.

All of that work, all of that training and expense and struggle to make it out to the field was, and still is to me, due to the importance of Bible Translation. When animistic people enslaved by fears of the spirit world are finally able to read and understand the message of Jesus in their own language it gives them hope beyond their wildest dreams.

So the main thing is to make sure that translator can get there in one piece. If something bad happens to a translator all of the work on a new translation can be lost. I had worked hard to be the best pilot that I could be so that would never happen. Now I was taking my first translator to his assignment in the field and I was so happy I was almost giddy.

The beauty of the blue morning sky, the deep emerald forests, the silvery rivers and majestic Papuan mountains outside my window were overwhelming. I thought: I get paid to do this? I kept looking away from the translator so he wouldn’t see the silly grin that my professional pilot face couldn’t mask.

But soon I saw something that rapidly wiped the grin from my face. We were over the village, making a high altitude pass to inspect the airfield. There was a wadded up white and green blur just off one side of the runway. What’s that? I thought. I turned and made another pass. O Lord! That’s an airplane! That’s what’s left of one of those aircraft called an Islander. That sobered me up quick. This is serious business. Bad things can happen out here kid. You better get your game on. You better be paying attention. I focused in hard on the task at hand, to get the airplane on the ground and parked as best and professionally as I possibly could.

And then, I stepped out of the airplane, and lost my professional pilot face for the second time that day. I had never been in a Papuan mountain village before. It was National Geographic in living color right in front of me! The men were wearing their only clothing, tall, thin, conical shaped gourds fitted over their genitals, tied just below the waste and pointing straight up. And the women were in grass skirts. Only they weren’t skirts, more like flat, dried, twelve inch blades of grass stacked atop one another and folded in half and tied over a string that circled the waist. And that was it. Nothing else.

It was more than this modest mid-western preacher’s boy could take! I joke with my friends that where I come from we take showers in our clothes! I could feel my face going full red. I turned around and stuck my head in the cockpit and studied my map. I wrote in my log book. I inspected the airplane! Anything I could do to keep my eyes off of the people. I couldn’t eat the rest of the day. I was just toast! This is a whole nother world, I thought. Have I landed on Mars or something? It took a long time for me to regain my composure.

The Papuan people are like anybody else on the planet. When they see an improvement on life they want it. Today, with better transportation and the availability of baled used clothing for pennies on the pound more Papuan people groups are wearing clothes. They really like wearing them because the mountains get cold. But they weren’t wearing them on that day and I was embarrassed.

Now, after twenty-five years on the field, the Papuan people are very dear to me. I no longer notice what they are wearing but what is in their hearts. And I keep my professional pilot face in place…most of the time.

OF AIRPLANES AND ECONOMICS

By Dane Skelton

Two themes seem to dominate the news of late: Airplanes and economics. Specifically, some horrendous crashes - the Reno Air Race crash, the Russian hockey team crash – have grabbed the headlines along with the Greek debt crisis, America’s persistent nine percent unemployment rate and the ongoing foreclosure crisis (not to mention the national debt!).

Bad news always gets the headlines. That’s what made me want to share some good news, and some good economic advice, that came from an unlikely place. An article in AOPA Flight Training Magazine caught my attention this morning. It was by a pilot who was retiring after fifty mishap free years in the air as an airline pilot and Flight Instructor. We never hear about these guys do we?

Now, I know you must be thinking: “Dane, what on earth does this have to do with economics, with paying my bills and achieving financial security?” Bear with me. The pilot boiled all fifty years of his accident free experience down to one simple principle: Always fly with the idea that if anything can go wrong it will and work hard to prepare for it. For example, you wouldn’t believe how many airplanes crash each year simply because they run out of gas. The veteran’s advice? Never assume the gages are correct. Unless you have personally drained dry the gas tanks on the airplane you are flying and refilled them so that you know exactly how much they hold and exactly how many gallons per hour that ship burns land and refuel when you think you have one hour of flying time remaining. Simple right? Self impose a one hour fuel margin and NEVER break it.

Now to the economic side of the story. We live in a world of economic hazards. Any thing can go wrong and usually will at the worst possible moment. We need to prepare for it. A hurricane can blow your house down or flood it; a trip to the emergency room can hammer your wallet; the car can break down and you will miss work. Yet few of us – including national political leadership - operate with any self imposed financial safety limits. We fly along on credit, with little to no reserve, blowing right past any kind of sensible margin assuming that all will be well. Until the bottom drops out, the sky closes in, and our personal economic engines start to sputter. Safe landings are hard to come by in those situations.

But the biblical principle (see the Proverb below) is quite simple: Work hard, spend less than you earn, set aside funds for future contingencies, and do it consistently, year after year. Then that tsunami called Poverty won’t be able to outrun you nor the bandit Scarcity overpower you.

Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest. How long will you lie there, you sluggard? When will you get up from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest-- and poverty will come on you like a bandit and scarcity like an armed man. (Proverbs 6:6-11 NIV)

There is no such thing as security apart from God. Even the best prepared person can be overcome by an economic hurricane. But as I have seen time and time again, God provides for his people through his church. When we follow the biblical principles of economic discipline we will know the peace of financial security and the blessing of being able to help others when the crisis comes.

CHANGING IDENTITIES

By Dane Skelton

What are you known by among your friends? In other words, what are the identifying characteristics that make you, you? As adults most of us are known by our professions, or former jobs. I’m “the preacher” who used to be “a car guy” (and still is most of the time). What sets you apart or makes you unique among your peers? It might be a talent, or a theology you’re attached to. He’s a Calvinist, she’s a singer. Or social / political views: He’s a vegetarian, she’s a conservative. Most of us find some comfort, some level of personal worth by identifying ourselves that way. It helps us know who we are.

Now what if God was to suddenly call you out of that comfortable identity and open a door into a whole new world that you had never considered before? Would you walk through it? That’s what happened to the Apostle Peter in Acts chapter ten. It’s the story of how the gospel was first introduced to a gentile audience. A Roman centurion, a gentile who feared God named Cornelius, is visited by an angel. The angel tells him to send for Peter. At the same time Peter, an observant Jew who ate only kosher food and never entered a gentile home for fear of defilement, has a vision of all kinds of hitherto “unclean,” as defined by Old Testament dietary laws, animals. In the vision the voice of the Lord says, “Rise Peter, kill and eat.” Peter struggles with that command until God says, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”

The point of the story is that Peter is no longer to consider the gentiles “out of bounds” for the gospel. When Cornelius’ servants call for him Peter welcomes them, travels with them to Cornelius and wonder of wonder for a Jew, enters his home to preach. It’s a great story of the spread of the good news.

But the thing that brought me up short was how quickly God expected Peter to exchange his old identity for a new one. The Old Testament dietary laws are key identifying marks of a Jew. They are one of the things that make a Jew a Jew. How hard it must have been for Peter to discard them! You can see it in his response to the vision: “Surely not Lord! I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.” (Acts 10:14). Yet God clearly calls Peter to walk through that door into a new identity. He is no longer simply Peter the Jewish follower of Jesus. He is Peter, the Jew who makes friends with gentiles and even eats and sleeps in their homes.

How can that be? How can God just UNDO two thousand years of Jewish theology and spiritual identity in a single story in the book of Acts? Well, he didn’t undo anything. He fulfilled all of the requirements for holiness and righteousness and purity, things which the dietary and other exclusivity laws were made to illustrate, in the person of his son Jesus Christ. He fulfilled them perfectly and brought them to a conclusion at the cross. Now the holiness, and righteousness, the spiritual purity and identity that mark his people out in the world come not from how they dress or what they eat or where they go or don’t go or who they hang out with. Now it all comes from Christ. (See Colossians 1:19-23).

Peter embraced this radical change because of his identity in Christ. So what is your identity? What have you called unclean that God says is no longer unclean? What door is God calling you to walk through that would have been unimaginable before Christ gave you a new identity?

REMEMBER THE WARRIORS

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

Jesus

The peace and security that you and I have enjoyed for the past ten years is easy to take for granted. There have been terrorist attacks and attempted attacks. The Fort Hood massacre stands out in memory along with the wanna be martyr shoe bomber and the underwear bomber and Times Square bomber attempts at mass murder. Many other smaller, one man operations perpetrated by Muslims against people of various faiths and no faith at all have been carried out since 9-11. But no plot with the coordination and scale of 9-11 has succeeded. Thus most of us live without fear. We complain and make jokes about airport security, wonder if our rights are being abused by the phone companies, yawn lazily and go to bed not worrying if the world will still be the same tomorrow.

That is due in large part to the dedicated professionalism of the men and women of America’s Special Forces, the CIA and other clandestine services. They are invisible to most of us, avoiding the limelight by necessity as well as by preference. We hear about them occasionally, most notably Seal Team 6’s successful mission against Osama bin Laden. But then the headlines fade and we forget.

I’m writing this today to ask you not to forget these brave men and women. Their task is Biblical: “He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the evil doer.” (Romans 13:4). Theirs is a dirty job that requires a lifetime of dedication to personal discipline and the honing of warrior skills that are unknown to the rest of us. The training itself is often as dangerous as the missions and goes on unseen and unheralded for years, sometimes decades, before the moment arrives and a chief executive finds – as the President did with the bin Laden mission - that he has the tools to defend us.

I’m afraid I’m not doing this subject justice so let me encourage you to learn on your own about these brave men and women who lay down their lives for us every day. The two books I’ve read are: Masters of Chaos: The Secret History of the Special Forces by Linda Robinson and The Night Stalkers: Top Secret Missions of the U.S. Army’s Special Operations Aviation Regiment. There are others. After you’ve read them you won’t forget to pray for the warriors who protect us from the terrors.

EULOGY FOR JOHN STOTT

February 15, 1993, the sanctuary of Atlanta’s Church of the Apostles, is recorded forever in my personal Bible. It’s recorded there because I knew I would never want to lose the lecture notes I would take that day. They came from the same man who authored at least eight of the most important books in my personal library including his magnum opus THE CROSS OF CHRIST and over fifty others that will influence Christian leaders for generations to come. His name was John R. W. Stott. His clarity was legendary, his accuracy impeccable, his thoroughness indisputable. As Tim Stafford wrote in his Christianity Today Magazine eulogy, “He always turned to the Bible for understanding, and his unforgettable gift was to penetrate and explain the Scriptures. As editor Kenneth Kantzer wrote in CT's pages in 1981, "When I hear him expound a text, invariably I exclaim to myself, 'That's exactly what it means! Why didn't I see it before?'"

John R. W. Stott passed from this earth at age ninety on July 27, 2011. Stott was the Rector of the Church of All Souls in London from 1950 to 1975 whereupon he became Rector Emeritus so that he could continue to spend more time on his worldwide ministries. I want very much for you to know and appreciate him but I can’t begin to cover, in the few paragraphs here, the impact he has made. Instead I will share my notes from that day and encourage you to read the Wikipedia page about him on your own.

“Never take the attitude that you couldn’t be clearer, more accurate or more practical, no matter what kind of compliments you may receive.”

“Some of the Bible is hard to understand. Therefore, never be so arrogant as to think you don’t need a teacher.” (2 Peter 3:16).

“Never take your modern ideas and transplant them into the meaning of the Biblical writer. Take the meaning of the writer and say it, speak it into modernity.”

“Our ultimate goal and our constant motivation are and should ever be the supreme glory and honor of Jesus Christ.”

“The good news is just this: God’s righteousness – God’s way of putting us right without putting himself into the wrong.”

“In exegesis (Biblical interpretation) I feel the need to think myself prayerfully into the text until I am under it, not over it. It is meditation really, over and over, reflecting on the text prayerfully, until I think that I understand its message. It takes time. It begins with time.”

I hope you will visit Wikipedia and Christianity Today to read more about Stott. However, if you find that you do not have time remember this much: If there is some part of the faith that you do not understand, some place where you want to go deeper but do not know how, or some collision between the world as you know it and the gospel as you understand it – consult John R. W. Stott. You will be glad that you did.