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Outlook

Monday, March 11th, 2013

I stumbled upon this bit of prose & thought I’d stick it up here:

Outlook

Greed

    My life is full indeed of gloom.
    I’ve naught , you see, just this small room.
    I need more wealth – that’s misery.
    What joys in great renown! What glee!
    The mace and throne I long to own.
    No crown too grand for me alone.

Contentment

    My life is full indeed!
    Of gloom I’ve naught, you see.
    Just this small room I need.
    More wealth? That’s misery.
    What joy’s in great renown?
    What glee the mace and throne?
    I long to own no crown.
    Too grand for me alone.

The Pessimist

    That deep red rose – I see its thorn.
    I just ignore the scent that’s borne.
    To me it’s nothing. I deplore
    Those scratches that I got before.
    I just complain about the pain.
    A lot I think of beauty’s gain!

The Optimist

    That deep red rose I see,
    Its thorn I just ignore.
    The scent that’s borne to me –
    It’s nothing I deplore!
    Those scratches that I got –
    Before I just complain
    About the pain a lot,
    I think of beauty’s gain.

Degradation

    This skid row bum will win no more.
    He’ll strive and lose in his sad war.
    On gin he’s hooked – that demon booze!
    And now he’ll loudly sing the blues.
    He’s chased away all hope today.
    Will Spring have cheer? No – more decay.

Redemption

    This skid row bum will win!
    No more he’ll strive and lose.
    In his sad war on gin
    He’s hooked that demon booze.
    And now he’ll loudly sing,
    The blues he’s chased away.
    All hope today will spring:
    Have cheer – no more decay!

— Mary Youngquist

It’s all in the punctuation, and perspective. Or outlook.

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Heavenly Envy

Tuesday, February 28th, 2012

I went to a funeral for friend this afternoon. He died at age 55. A month or so ago I attended the funeral for a guy I hung out with in high school; he died at 50. I still feel like I’m too young to be burying people that are close to my own age, but I guess it’s a natural part of life. Our bodies aren’t meant to last forever, at least not our earthly bodies. Our heavenly bodies… Now that’s another story altogether.

I don’t know when it started, and I don’t know if I’m the only one with this problem, but at funerals I often catch myself being slightly envious of the one who has passed away… That should probably be qualified a bit more; envious of fellow Christians who have passed away. Envious because I know (if only just a little) the glory they enjoy after leaving this life behind. Meanwhile I’m still stuck in this aging old tent. Our bodies, like tents, aren’t made to last for ever nor for long-term habitation. Try as I might, mine will only last another 40 years or so longer, tops (probably less.) But I have consolation that as this body moves toward its end, a new life is developing that will one day be fully realized in the presence of my Lord:

So we’re not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us. There’s far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can’t see now will last forever.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18

Although I am admittedly anxious to get to that celebration, I have no intention of hastening my date with eternity. I am content with God’s plan for my life, whether His exit plan for me involves a fatal run-in with a cement truck tomorrow, or a long convalescence through my 70’s or 80’s or 90’s… I’ll live the rest of my days in gratitude for the blessings He’s sent my way, especially for the loving wife and great kids that I so don’t deserve.

But still there’s that, something… that envy that makes me long for the things to come. It’s a hope for things to come; not a hope, as in “I hope it will happen”, but a hope as in something that is sure, yet is just out of reach and will arrive at a time I don’t know. As C.S. Lewis so aptly put it,

We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we wanted before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.

That’s right; while I am, this — that built-in longing for what has been promised and will be — just is. I can’t wait for Heaven, but I will.

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Casey Who?

Wednesday, July 6th, 2011

I’ve paid about zero attention to the Casey Anthony trial, so all I knew of it was the little tidbits that I caught before flipping the TV or radio to another station when the name came up. The jury yesterday returned a verdict of “not guilty”. Unfortunately, the end of the trail won’t be the end of the endless prattling about Casey Anthony and the suspicious death of her daughter, Caylee.

Since the verdict was announced, I’ve heard way more commentary on the trial than while the trial was still ongoing, and most people seem to be convinced that she did indeed kill her daughter — that’s the most logical explanation for the circumstances surrounding Caylee’s disappearance and death and Casey’s behavior — but the prosecutors failed to prove it to the jury. She did mess up by lying to the police, and will serve some time for that, but once that’s accomplished, she’ll be a free woman.

Or will she?

She knows what happened, and whether she acknowledges God’s existence or not, He knows what happened, and will one day sort things out with her. Whether she comes to terms with Him before that day and seeks forgiveness… That’s her story, and something we are not privy to. He’s definitely hoping that she’ll seek His forgiveness, and we should hope & pray the same for her, as we should for everyone.

In God’s economy, all sin — whether it’s killing an innocent like Calee Anthony or the hateful thoughts in my head toward the idiot who cut me off on the way to work this morning — carries an equal punishment; death and eternal separation from God. But no matter what our sin, should we seek forgiveness for our actions and our condition through Christ Jesus, we will be forgiven. Yes, if Casey did indeed kill her daughter, she can be forgiven, just as I have been forgiven for the sin that once ruled my life and the sins that I continue to commit. She can be forgiven just as Jeffrey Dahmer was forgiven for the sin in his life. Just as you can be forgiven.

We as a society grade each other much differently than does God. We like to categorize and rank our own sins and those of others according to degrees of ‘badness’, then dole out punishments according to where those societal sins fall on our scale of badness. God treats all sin the same, but holds us all to a single standard; Holiness. Casey Anthony was found not guilty, but that is not the equivalent of innocent. In the eyes of many, her sin is as egregious as it gets — murder of her own child — compounded by also getting away with murder. Because of that societal judgment, the remainder of Casey’s life will be far from easy, in spite of the “not guilty” finding. Sure, the morbid curiosity surrounding the outcome of the trial will likely bring her much celebrity and a lot of money — interviews and maybe a book or movie deal — but she’ll always be a pariah.

But what really confuses and saddens me following the whole circus of a trial is the level of hatred for Casey Anthony, and the hypocritical double-standard it brings out in many people. Popular opinion says that she is a cold-hearted monster because she killed her daughter, and deserves much worse than she’s getting following the trial. But isn’t it more than a tad ironic that thousands of children are slaughtered every day in abortion clinics across the country after their mothers exercise their supposed right to choose? And we as a society barely bat an eye at the carnage. It’s likely that Casey Anthony made essentially the same choice as millions of other women before her and thousands more every day; Casey’s sin is that she made her choice later than what is socially acceptable (and acceptable by the laws of the land.) She is simply a victim of bad timing, right?

The photos we have of a doe-eyed Caylee Anthony are everywhere to remind us of the precious life that has been lost, probably at the hand of her mother. But because there are no photos of the millions and millions of children that have been killed through abortion and ignored by society, we have difficulty envisioning the beauty of those children, but they are no less precious than Caylee. And lacking some visual or physical connection with them, wrapping our minds around the enormity of that loss is somehow beyond us. Out of sight, out of mind; but the loss is no less real, and I believe much more damaging to our society than we will ever know.

Edit: Turns out I’m not the only one making the Caylee Anthony and abortion connection; Rush Limbaugh: Casey Anthony Not Guilty of Very Late-Term Abortion (July 6). Jenny Erickson on The Stir: Is Abortion Age Discrimination?, and many others.

Update: I just happened across this post when looking for another, and coincidentally, she will be officially done with her incarceration and probation at midnight tonight. Will be interesting to see how things progress. Or not.

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The Church Feminine

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

Had a slightly disorienting experience last weekend… Emily was up for an award at Augie, so we went to the Viking Days Chapel Service on Sunday morning, held in the Elmen Center. During the service, the only male involved in the service was Rob Oliver, the college president, who opened the service with a brief welcome message. That was it. Everyone else — other than the male members of the band and choir performing for the service — was female. The procession involved only women… The Scripture readers were women… The preaching was done by a woman… Communion was served by women… The service sounded pretty much like any generic Lutheran service I’d attended in the past; a liturgy very reminiscent of that followed by Catholics every day around the world, which is probably why it seemed strange to me that it was all women. There was no big deal made of the absence of the Y-chromosome that day, but it was noticeable. At least by me.

Augustana College “is a selective, private, residential, comprehensive (liberal arts and professional) college of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America;” the ELCA tends to be a bit more on the liberal side of the scale than any of my church experiences. Female pastors have been ordained and leading churches in the denomination for quite some time, and now the denomination even “partnered gay and lesbian pastors to be ordained and called to serve churches. Previously, the ELCA allowed only celibate homosexual pastors.” Given that, an all-female chapel service shouldn’t have been surprising.

I guess the older I get, the more difficulty I have with things like that; things that are done differently than what I’m used to. When I was growing up (in the Catholic church) only men & boys were involved in leading Mass. Thinking back there were on occasion women (nuns) leading some songs in some of the Masses, but for the most part it was priests and altar boys. Since my day, I understand things have expanded to allow girls or boys (now called “altar servers”), but I’ve been away from Catholicism long enough that that’s outside my experience. I’ve now been a member of a somewhat traditional Baptist congregation for nearly all my adult life; there, women are involved in the worship services and the denomination has ordained women as pastors, but the church has fairly rigid guidelines as to the role of women in ministry. I can recall only one time that a ‘sermon’ was delivered by a woman at that church, and that wasn’t well received by a number of people in the congregation. These days, I think women are allowed to teach Sunday school to kids, but it’s got to be a guy teaching a class of adults. I don’t know if that’s actually in the rule books anywhere, but I’ve heard that from a couple of sources; it would come as no surprise to me if it were true.

The ELCA has pretty much declared that Paul’s admonition against allowing women to teach men is an anachronistic holdover from a time and society where that sort of thing wasn’t acceptable (they seem to have gone to an extreme though with the homosexuals in ministry issue) My own church is of a decidedly different mindset, one with which I’ve grown more comfortable over the years. I didn’t really have a problem with the church service on Sunday; it didn’t make me uncomfortable, it just took me by surprise I guess, because all the things that I had become so accustomed to seeing done by men in a Catholic Mass were being done by women. Like I said; just a bit disorienting. A bit of disorientation is maybe a good thing because it makes us think about the things we take for granted, and wonder if there are valid reasons behind the way things are.

It’s funny that we as Christians tend to pick and choose which Biblical teachings we hang onto, anachronistic or not — for example, you won’t find many people in Christian circles arguing that we start worshiping and enjoying a day of rest on Saturdays instead of Sundays, even though nothing in the Bible gives clear direction that changing the Sabbath to Sunday was something we should do. It’s something that was done ages ago to honor the day that Jesus was raised from the dead, but… The Old Testament is pretty clear; “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.” And Saturday has always been the Sabbath.

But anyway… the whole women in ministry thing is one of those contentious cognitive dissonance subjects that we as a church don’t really talk much about, because some people feel pretty strongly one way or another, and because many others (me included) have conflicting feelings about it, and just don’t want to make waves. One day though, it’ll all be made plain to us, but for now, we muddle along pretending we know what we’re doing.

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The Cicada Killer Wasp

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

For the last few summers we’ve had some scary looking bugs in our yard. Thankfully, they’re just scary looking, and nothing to really be afraid of, provided you’re not a cicada.


A female cicada killer wasp in flight, approaching a prospective nest site.

The lifecycle of the cicada killer wasp sounds like something out of a Ridley Scott movie… The female cicada killer wasp hunts down a cicada and stings it to paralyze it. When the cicada is safely immobilized, the wasp carries the cicada back to its burrow — a hole dug in loose soil. The cicada is placed in a dead-end chamber of the burrow; the female then lays a single egg (sometimes two) on the still paralyzed but very much alive cicada, and seals up the chamber. When the egg hatches, the larva gnaws through the exoskeleton of the cicada and feeds on its internal organs, saving the nervous system for last so as to maximize the length of time that the cicada remains alive. Gruesome, no?


The same female digging in the loose dirt for a new nest site.

The female cicada wasp killers are very large; up to 2 inches long. I’ve had them buzz by my head a few times and the sound is pretty unnerving if you’re not expecting it. The males are supposedly much smaller, but I can’t say that I’ve seen any.

Very scary looking, but very cool. It’s this kind of thing that makes me really question the theory of evolution. The evolution of physical body parts is only part of the equation; what about complex behaviors like this? So the larvae that just happened to leave the nervous system for last gained an evolutionary advantage over the others? And how did that “just happened” get passed on to the progeny of those lucky larvae? Nah; not buying it. I wouldn’t need to believe in an omnipotent, omniscient Creator to know that something like that doesn’t happen by chance.

God makes some cool stuff!

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What Are The Chances…

Saturday, August 1st, 2009

Had a weird one happen yesterday…

Caleb & I drove up to the Twin Cities to go to the Mall of America & goof around a bit. Actually, the Mall thing was more of a secondary excuse for going there, as I’d arranged to buy some needed BMW parts from a guy in St. Paul who was parting out a 528e. But we had a great time at the theme park inside the mall, so it was a great excuse to get us up there!

Anyway, when we finally got to the mall, found a parking spot and walked into the building, we bumped into my niece Kelsey and her mom, my brother’s ex-wife. Wow; what ARE the chances of that happening? For us to be walking in the fourth floor east parking ramp entrance at the same moment that they were walking out the same entrance… It kinda boggles the mind.

We didn’t exactly get to the mall directly… We drove up 35W, and I was looking for signs along the freeway that would tell me which exit to turn off to get to the mall, and didn’t see anything. When I finally decided we’d gone too far north, we were at the University of Minnesota (go Gophers!) Checking the map, I saw that where we were was directly north of the mall (way north, by about 15 miles!), so rather than taking 35W back south, we took the more circuitous route through the city, following Cedar Avenue, which connects directly with Minnesota 77, which passed right by the mall.

That took us to a side of the mall that I hadn’t been to on my previous few visits, and that put us in the east parking ramp, which I guess is a mirror image of the west ramp, which I was originally aiming for. We made a couple of sorties into parking areas only to be frustrated by finding no empty spots. Caleb suggested that we go to the top floor, and I suggested the one just below so we’d be in the shade, so we ended up near the fourth floor. Then we couldn’t find a couple of things in the van and had to hunt around a bit for them. Then we headed into the building for the surprise…

It makes me wonder how things like that come about, and why. All those delays put us in the right place at the right time for something wonderful to happen. I’m a firm believer that there is no such thing as a ‘coincidence’. Things happen because they are allowed to happen and we’re guided to appointments that God has arranged for us. We don’t always know what the purpose of those appointments is, nor should we be consumed by trying to interpret what they’re all about… I just have to sit, slack-jawed in awe of the Master of the Universe who can coordinate things so… beautifully.

That incident reminds me of something minor that happened years ago; I happened to look out the back window of our house on Norton at the very moment that a leaf fell from our neighbor’s Silver Maple tree. It was a solitary leaf falling after most of the others fell, and that leaf fell in such a manner, and the wind guided it just so that the hook of the stem caught on a branch of a smaller tree at the back of our yard. Like yesterday’s ‘coincidence’, that made me sit back in wonder at how intricately woven our lives are, and how awesome is the God who orchestrates this marvelous tapestry of our lives.

Wow.

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Rush Limbaugh To Speak At Sojourners Event?

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

I just got this by email this afternoon:

In an inspiring display of bipartisan bridge-building, talk radio personality Rush Limbaugh has accepted Jim Wallis’ invitation to deliver a keynote address at Sojourners’ Mobilization to End Poverty conference in April.

“I’ve always said the monologue of the extreme right is over, and a new dialogue has begun,” said Wallis. “Well, that dialogue is about to get a whole lot louder.”

Bipartisan bridge-building? Whatever. This was a shock to me. But then, I remembered what day it was. Wow; did I get snookered with that! Look at me, the classic April Fool.

I’ve been working on a post about the Sojourners for a while now, and I suppose this is as good an opportunity to finish it up as any. I bumped into the Sojourners a while back and subscribed to their newsletter emailing list out of curiosity. From what I’ve read in those newsletters and on their website, saying that the Sojourners politics is left of center is a gross understatement. Their mission is based on what they call ‘social justice’, and they talk a lot about ending poverty, with seemingly no qualms about employing the government to make it happen. The tone of their newsletters has been next to giddy ever since Obama won the Presidency, presumably because Sojourners sees Obama as one of their own; a leftist determined to even the score between the have’s and the have-not’s in this country through some sort of government-imposed income redistribution.

I would take issue with the Sojourners for that alone, but it doesn’t stop there; they couch their program in Christian jargon, as if Jesus’ mission for Christians was to eliminate poverty through any means possible, including confiscatory taxes on the so-called ‘wealthy’ so the wealth can be “spread around”.

And that’s what really made me wonder what was behind Rush Limbaugh speaking at their big event. Of course, it was just a gag, complete with a hacked version of Limbaugh’s CPAC “national address” from earlier this year, reworded to have Rush mouthing the words that tickle their ears.

I’ve talked about this subject before; Jesus’ primary mission while on this Earth wasn’t to feed the poor or heal the sick or make the lame whole. He was here to save all of Mankind and to bring atonement for our sins. Did he feed the poor and heal the sick and make the lame whole? Sure. But he didn’t focus on that, and neither should we. Especially if doing that involves stealing what some people have rightfully earned so that we can, as our now-President so eloquently put it, “spread the wealth around”.

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A Short Road Trip… A Few Observations

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

I made a quick run to the inlaws’ house tonight, about a 60 mile drive, each way. Along the way I made a few observations…

  1. Since the BMW doesn’t have a working odometer, I thought this might be a good opportunity to check the gas mileage, so I filled up before leaving Sioux Falls and again at the same station when I got back. On the 117.6 mile trip I used 5.074 gallons of fuel, which translates to 23.18 miles per gallon. Not bad, especially considering the, um, spirited driving enjoyed along the way.
  2. The driving was particularly spirited along one of my favorite drives, a lonely 8 mile stretch of highway that runs along the river between Beloit, IA, and Fairview, SD. I hit three digits each way through there tonight; what a blast! On the way out there was a Ford F350 pickup traveling the same direction. I thought I’d overtake him quickly, but he was cooking along at a little over 90. I think he was a little surprised when I blew by him at about 120 or so. The white stripes on the highway zip by pretty quickly at that speed.

    My observation? Moving along at 55-60mph feels like a crawl when you were doing twice that only moments before. Also, it’s amazing how smooth and stable that ratty looking e28 is at high speeds.

  3. The stars! I stopped along the way on the return trip just to take in the view. It’s amazing how much more you can see in the sky without the light interference you find in the city. I’m becoming more convinced that people who spend most of their time in urban environments tend to become more detached from their Creator. It’s easy to think that man is the epitome of evolution when all you see is man-made. Here’s a tip; first chance you get, get far enough out of Dodge to escape the glow dome surrounding the city — about 30 miles or so — so you can really see the sky. It is truly amazing, and humbling. It makes a guy feel really small and insignificant, and makes one wonder how the God of the universe could take an interest in something so small.

That’s all I can think of right now. Other than a few niggling issues with the car that popped up along the way. The cruise control was working fine most of the way, but near my destination on the way out the brake light warning came on, and the cruise control wouldn’t work. It came back on for the return trip, but later the brake light warning came on again, and again the cruise wouldn’t work. The power windows quit working a couple of days ago, but along the way I fiddled with the breaker switch under the dash and they started working again, for a short time. That narrows down the possible problem areas anyway. Also, the brake pedal seems to be getting a little on the soft side; might have to bring it over to Abe & have him check things over.

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An Angelic Army

Monday, January 19th, 2009

A couple of Sundays before Christmas last, our pastor delivered a short devotional to accompany the church’s Christmas Cantata in the morning service, and one of his three points was something that really hadn’t occurred to me before…

And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear. And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
“Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”

I always get goosebumps when I read the stories of angelic visits in the Bible and elsewhere; can you imagine the shock experienced by the shepherds when that angel popped in? “Fear not,” they always say… “Too late!” I’d say (if I could say anything, that is.) “‘Scuse me while I go clean out my drawers.” But did you catch that in the second paragraph? It was a heavenly host; not a choir, not a group, not a quartet. A host. The term “host” in medieval Latin literally means “army”. It was an army that was sent to announce the Savior’s birth!

While the message was delivered to the shepherds — they were the only ones mentioned in the narrative — the message was directed more at Satan, challenging the authority he held over the earth. The statement “Glory to God in the highest” was the angels’ way of putting Satan in his place in relation to God; God is in the highest place, and all else is under his dominion, even Satan. And that message delivered by a host — an army of angels… Imagine the sound of that; the mental image I get is of the Promise Keepers events I’ve attended with the sound of tens of thousands of voices chanting or singing in unison. (Like the time Steve Green led us in singing The Battle Hymn of the Republic for the closing song at the Boulder, CO, PK event some years ago. Goosebumps again!)

Back to the sermon; Pastor Petersen said it much better than I can rephrase it, so here’s a transcript of the second point from his message from that day (taken from the message posted online, from 11:43 to 16:20.)

Warfare.
Warfare!
Warfare?
Why are you talking about warfare at a time like this? A time like Christmas?
Because the glory of God is the focal point of all spiritual warfare. Satan, from the beginning, has desired God’s glory. He wanted it, and he did everything he could to get it. And as a result he ravaged the world, set it on a course for destruction.
Listen to what Isaiah wrote in Chapter 14 about Satan himself:
How you have fallen from heaven,
O morning star, son of the dawn!
You have been cast down to the earth,
you who once laid low the nations!
You said in your heart, ”

Now this is the heart of Satan himself…

“You said in your heart,
“I will ascend to heaven;
I will raise my throne
above the stars of God;
I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly,
on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. [a]
I will ascend above the tops of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.”

Over & over Satan’s heart was to be above God!

Listen to what’s said at the birth of Jesus;
“Glory to God in the…” say it with me… “Highest!” The highest!

Now also note what we’re told in Luke chapter 2 verse 11. Please note, it doesn’t say there was a choir. There was no choir present at the birth of Jesus. Do you know what was present? A military unit. An army was at the birth of Jesus. Not a choir, not people dressed in white robes playing harps, it was a military campaign. “Heavenly host” means “heavenly army”, an army of God fitted with the angels of heaven. The mighty ones of God. And they were at the birth of Jesus. Not singing lullabies, but declaring warfare.

Satan has been against God from the beginning, he’s trying to take glory from God, and we’re here to tell you the gauntlet has been put down, the war has begun, the Son of God is here, Glory to God in the highest.

Is there another Amen here? Amen!

That little baby grew to be a boy and a man, and went right to the cross, and at the cross the climax of spiritual warfare occurred. where Jesus died for the sins of the world, so that anyone who would receive him would be forgiven of their sins, receive the very power of God in their lives to live for God and to do spiritual warfare in this world.

Because Paul says in the New Testament, Ephesians chapter 6, our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the forces of darkness in this world. How on Earth do we have hope against the forces of darkness? Ahhh! Glory to God… In the highest. Jesus Christ makes it possible.

In all the times I’ve heard that story, that’s the first I can recall where the angelic host was referred to as something other than musical accompaniment to the arrival of the Christ Child. The image of a choir of angels never seemed quite right or satisfying to me… The story of the birth of Jesus plays an important part in the whole of the Gospel narrative, but the glurge that often goes with it can be a bit much. Jesus came to Earth to set things right, and God knew that’s something Satan wouldn’t like. It would take more than a choir to send the proper message, so the angelic army was to show that God meant business; that Jesus had at his disposal all the power of God.

Too many people want to keep Jesus in the manger; he’s safer and more controllable there, but that’s not what Jesus’ mission was. He came to shake things up, and for that I am thankful.

Many people who think of themselves as Christians and “good people” only want to see the calm and peace-loving side of Jesus. I remember arguing with some friends about this subject during the run-up to the Iraq war; they questioned how I could, as a Christian, support the war, because after all, Jesus said to “turn the other cheek”, so Christians were supposed to be all about peace and happiness and forgiving those who’ve wronged us. But Jesus was very upfront about his purpose on Earth;

“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn
” ‘a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her motherinlaw—
a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’
Jesus — Matthew 10:34-36

I don’t write this trying to justify the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — that’s far too complicated for one so easily distracted as me — but Jesus knew that his coming would bring conflict, and because he is both God and Man, that conflict crosses over from the spiritual realm to the physical. He also warned his followers that the enemy’s hatred would carry over to them — and to us, two centuries removed. The Fall was a the first earthly manifestation of that conflict, and we’ve been suffering in it ever since. The problem is that whether we acknowledge it or not, we’re in a war. I firmly believe that the negative attitudes toward and persecution of Christians and Jews throughout the ages are a direct result of that war, but many think that if we can only convince those doing the persecuting that we aren’t so bad, they’ll be nicer.

The trouble is that there is no logical earthly cause behind their hatred, and all the peace talks in the world won’t end it. The conflict will only end with the triumphant return of Jesus, accompanied by that same angelic host, in even greater force, and with even more to say than on that starry night oh so long ago.

image; “White Rose” by Gustave Doré.

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“A Doctor’s Wisdom”

Sunday, November 23rd, 2008

A worried woman went to her gynecologist and said: “Doctor, I have a serious problem and desperately need your help! My baby is not even 1 year old and I’m pregnant again. I don’t want kids so close together.”

So the doctor said: “OK, and what do you want me to do?”

She said: “I want you to end my pregnancy, and I’m counting on your help with this.”

The doctor thought for a little, and after some silence he said to the lady: “I think I have a better solution for your problem. It’s less dangerous for you too.”

She smiled, thinking that the doctor was going to accept her request.

Then he continued: “You see, in order for you not to have to take care of 2 babies at the same time, let’s kill the one in your arms. This way, you could rest some before the other one is born. If we’re going to kill one of them, it doesn’t matter which one it is. There would be no risk for your body if you chose the one in your arms.”

The woman was horrified and said: “No doctor! How terrible! It’s a crime to kill a child!”

“I agree,” the doctor replied. “But you seemed to be OK with it, so I thought maybe that was the best solution.” The doctor smiled, realizing that he had made his point.

He convinced the mom that there is no difference in killing a child that’s already been born and one that’s still in the womb. The crime is the same, even if killing the unborn child is “legal”.

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