Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Buying Bullets and Having A Gun Range Behind a Daycare Are NotEquivalent

Viagra and Contraceptives are not Equivalent

In the wake of the Hobby Lobby verdict by SCOTUS, I’ve seen many different people posting graphics lamenting the fact that there is obviously a bias against women because Hobby Lobby doesn’t want to provide certain forms of birth control through their health insurance but Viagra is covered.  If you think the owners of Hobby Lobby are off their knick-knacky rocker, fine, but try to be honest in your comparisons. 

Right now, I’m not primarily interested in getting pro-choicers to agree with my conclusions about when human life beings or why and how it should be protected; I just want us to be as fair and honest in our conversation as possible.   This form of humoring can go both ways too.  Let me show you:

Pro-choicers don’t believe that a fertilized egg is a human child.  So, if I truly believed that, then I’d have no problem with drugs or other means used to kill that thing and stop me (or my daughter, etc) from having a baby.  Why would I?  If something is no more morally significant than naval lint, why would I care if it were destroyed? 

The reason that Hobby Lobby, and other pro-lifers, are opposed to various forms of FDA approved contraception is that they believe that these specific forms have the likelihood of destroying a fertilized egg (read: kill a baby).  Now, again, feel free to disagree with the presupposition (i.e. fertilized egg = fully human baby) and the resulting conclusion (destroying that fertilized egg = killing a human baby), but understand that if someone believes that human life begins at the time of fertilization and they also generally don’t like the idea of killing people, then that is why they don’t want to have to pay for something that very possibly will end up killing a baby. 


So bear with me as I try to use a really bad analogy (RBA) to examine at the Viagra/birth control comparison that is clogging up the Internet:

Viagra and Contraceptives are both related to sexual intercourse.  Viagra has to do with a man’s physical ability to participate in sexual intercourse while contraceptives try to stop what naturally follows intercourse: the creation of a child. 

Bullets and Gun ranges are both related to shooting guns.  Bullets are what get shot out of guns, and gun ranges are where you can safely (relatively) shoot the guns. 


Just because I am not opposed to the idea shooting guns or of having a safe place to shoot them does not mean that I will participate in putting up a gun range behind a daycare facility. 

Sure the gun range is supposed to be safe and it is supposed to stop all of the bullets from getting outside of its property, but there’s still the off chance…the very slight chance that someone with a loaded gun could accidentally fire the gun and hit a child at the daycare. 

If me and my neighbors, or even the owner of the daycare center, got together and protested the building of a gun range, it doesn’t mean that I hate gun owners or that I have a prejudice against hunters or little old ladies who carry a 38 in their purses.  It just means that the possibility of tragedy and death is unacceptable.

So, please, if you’re actually interested in changing the minds of thinking people and not just in whipping up support from the masses that’ll get hysterical about anything, stop with the Viagra/birth control pill comparison in the hysteria following the Hobby Lobby Decision. 

PS – Medical coverage for vasectomies is a closer comparison than Viagra, but I don’t believe that anything resulting from the vasectomy can actually cause the death of a baby/killing of the fertilized egg.  So, good try with that one too, but still…not the same thing. 




Saturday, June 28, 2014

Diversity in Unity for Unified Maturity


(Ephesians 4:14-16)

There is an intentional diversity in the gifts that Christ gives to the church.  The gifts are individuals, diverse individuals, and they are given in order that through their ministry the whole church would be characterized by maturity in faith and a full knowledge of the Son of God.

The result of the work of these ministers is that we are to no longer be like children; so gullible and easy to sway.  While this is true and must be emphasized for those of us who have been saved, we ought not be derisive of the trusting and childlike faith that describes those who first come to see Christ as a beautiful and surpassingly gracious savior.  The point is that we ought to move past the stage of wide-eyed innocence into a stage of mature understanding. 

The imagery of the boat on the sea is excellent.  Maturity doesn’t calm the waves or still the winds; maturity allows you to withstand the waves. Maturity allows you to properly harness the right winds in order to get you to where you need to be.  Those who remain immature in their knowledge of the Son of God are easy prey for the sophisticated religious philosophers because they have never really recognized and understood how to examine these teachings on their own.  Or, worse, “they recognize it only in theory, but have never learned to make sue of it.” (F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Ephesians, 88) 

Thus, a local church that is filled with mature believers who are filled with the Spirit and properly using their own gifts so that the church as a whole is characterized by maturity will continue to grow less and less likely to be led astray by falsehood.  And while there are probably more well intentioned and fully convinced purveyors of false doctrine than I would like to contemplate, there is also no shortage of those who intentionally use parlor tricks, argumentative trickery, or well planned deceptions in order to deceive people in order to gain for themselves whatever it is that they desire.  Like a card counter or a gambler using weighted dice, it may look genuine to the untrained eye, but it is anything but genuine when examined carefully. 

Love is the concept, the reality, that both begins (4:2) and ends this section (vv. 15,16).  In our struggle for personal and corporate maturity, we must keep the love of Christ and our love for Christ squarely in our minds.  Tough love is only tough if it is also truly loving; acting in a way that is truly unloving is not the will of God for anything that we do.  If we are slandered as unloving or uncaring because of our attention to the majesty of God and our desire to love and honor Him above all others, we must do our best to explain how saying something that may be unwelcome or cause distress in the conscious of our audience is really a loving thing for us to do. 

And Gospel truth is never unaccompanied by love.  We hear of some people who are ‘all truth but no love’, but in fact people without love cannot be ‘all truth’, any more than people without a concern for truth can be ‘all love’ in any serous sense of the term. (Bruce, 89)

And once again, Paul is not stressing an individual’s spiritual growth in a vacuum.  His detailed analogy of how the body fits and works together verse 16 signals the conclusion that the goal is corporate maturity.  We must strive for corporate maturity in our local churches, and not merely our own personal spiritual maturity. 

A spiritually mature church is not marked by ranks of credentialed theologians who seem detached and unconcerned about the obedient spiritual lives of the church or of the souls of their communities. Nor is a spiritually mature church marked by its lack of committed and convinced theologians, or by those who profess theological humility or ignorance while having boldness in calling for action.  The mark of a mature church is that it will strive for excellence in theology so that the loving actions that are present are rooted and grounded in truth.  In practice, the mature church will, at best, succeed in imperfectly finding the balance of theology and activity while never ceasing to strive in becoming more faithfully obedient to God. 

Summary:

In a paragraph: The ministry of the church is reciprocal.  Those who teach do so in order that the body may individually grow so that the whole body will be mature.  This results in an identity of mature solidness in the faith that is not broken by new or different teachings that are spoken in clever and compelling ways.  The church is to be defined by truthfulness in deed and word.  Through it all, Christ is clung to and proclaimed as both the source and the goal of all growth and stability in the gospel. 

In a sentence: Resulting from the ministry of the church, Christians are to mature in faith and knowledge so that unbiblical, deceitful, or clever teaching will not sway the church.

Monday, June 23, 2014

New Federal Law Forces Animal Rights Groups to Provide Bear Skin Rugs to Employees

I am a master at really bad analogies or really bad examples (RBA or RBE for short), so I hope to not disappoint in the one that I’ll use today. 


I believe that human life begins at the point when the sperm and egg join together; I believe that human life begins at conception.  And when something is intentionally done to kill this new little life, regardless of how far along this child has developed or in what circumstances the child was conceived, that is a monstrously evil thing. Frankly, I’m not sure what is worse – the fact that many of the ways that abortions are done are so utterly barbaric and horrifying to think about (i.e. dismemberment, chemical burning, suctioning the brains out of a child’s head, etc.) or the fact that other – more sanitized – ways of killing children doesn’t bring about the same type of horrified reaction.

 

Of course I realize that what I just said has, for many people, put me on the whacko-mobile.  I get it. 

 

For years my understanding has been that conception means fertilization, and that these two concepts were virtually synonymous and there wasn’t really any debate over the definition of conception.  Well, that is not the case, and apparently it hasn’t been the case for a while.

 

As I understand it…

Technically, conception (scientifically speaking) means fertilization.  However, in medical contexts conception can refer to fertilization or the successful implantation of the fertilized egg into the uterus.   

 

Why is this important?  Well, because depending on the definition one chooses to use, you could say that Plan B or the normal birth control pill have no abortifacient effects.  Because abortion is the termination of a pregnancy, and pregnancy doesn’t start before conception. And if conception means the successful implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus, then medication that makes the uterus inhospitable to implantation thus causing the fertilized egg to not be implanted would technically not have an abortifacient effect. 


But, if you are convinced that human life begins at fertilization, then anything intended to prevent the baby from being implanted in the uterus (oral contraceptive) or from continuing in his or her natural progression (IUD/barriers) would cause the end of that pregnancy…the death of that child…an abortion.

Tomorrow the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is supposed to give a ruling on the birth control mandate in the Affordable Care Act.  As I understand the issue, it is not whether or an individual can buy (or not buy) various types of birth control for his or her own use, the issue is whether or not the United States government has the right to tell an employer that he or she must pay for something that he or she is opposed to on religious grounds.  In other words, if I owned a business I would be required to pay for (through the insurance plan that I must provide) the very things that, if used, would or could cause an abortion. 

 

What if this weren’t about abortion?  Instead, what if George Bush had passed a law requiring all companies to provide free or discounted beef to their employees?  Now, there’d be exceptions for Hindu temples and maybe even Hindu ministries, but any Hindu charities or private companies owned by Hindus would be forced to provide this free or discounted beef for their employees.

 

Furthermore, in proper George Bush fashion, his regime was not going to budge on this stance, and that while individuals have the right to buy or not to buy beef, a business has no such right to make that decision. 

 

This is not about President Bush, President Obama, Republicans or Democrats.  I know that abortions occur every day.  I know that.  I also know that money from the government to Planned Parenthood helps to fund the death of babies.  I get it.  I don’t like it, but I get it. 

 

Would I love to see all abortions illegal?  Absolutely.  And I will use my voice and dollars to try and change the hearts and minds of Americans so that someday, hopefully, Americans will want that too.  But it isn’t about this either. 

 

This is about a law that would force me to either participate in an activity (by paying for it) that is not just loathsome to me, but participating in something that is so contrary to my religious convictions that if you don’t have the same perspective you may well not even be able to comprehend how bad it is. 

 

But suffice it to say this, it’d be worse than requiring Peta to provide free meat, bear skin rugs, and coon skin caps to all of its employees. 

 

Peta wouldn’t oppose being required to provide these products to their employees because they hate their employees or want them to suffer.  They’d do it out of a love for the animals that would be butchered to make those products.  I’m not opposed to government requirement to provide birth control to women because I hate women or want to see them suffer.  I am opposed out of my love for the babies that are slaughtered and my desire to have no part in it. 

 

What happens when you follow Jesus and He leads you out of evangelicalism?

I remember when the iPhone 5 came out and there were several noticeable glitches with its map app - the most noticeable was that it would give you very clear turn by turn directions to the wrong place – all the while telling you that you’d reached your correct destination.   So at the risk of showing my colors as a guy who is not an exclusive apple devotee, I have almost exclusively used (and been pleased with) the google maps app.  Notice how I said "almost exclusively"?  Well, I was in a hurry one afternoon and just tapped the address stored in the contact info on my phone which then immediately brought up my apple maps app. I hesitated...but then just had it map the way for me to get to this home (a place I’d been to once before, but coming from a different direction).  The short conclusion to the story is that I ended up in the right town, and even on the right street as where I wanted to be, but in reality I was nowhere near where I intended to be.  The problem wasn’t that I followed the directions incorrectly – it’s that the guide I listened gave me very wrong directions.

What happens when you follow Jesus and He leads you out of evangelicalism?  The same thing that happened when I used my maps app on my iphone…you get lost.

The map was fine.   The information was there. But the guide I listened to gave me bad directions. 

So much about the article I just read is so unremarkable.  But that in itself is noteworthy.  The reason that this is noteworthily unremarkable is that the thoughts expressed are so much a part of the common refrain of post-evangelicals today.  Also, like many critiques of pop-evangelicalism, if you can see through the cloud of smoke rising from burning straw men, this woman raises a few points of concern that we would do well in noting.  One of these that she raises is the identification of evangelicals with republicans or, probably more to the point, equating republicans with evangelicals.  Evangelicals should be known for the gospel and not for political associations.  Go ahead and vote republican if you want (or if you can), but be careful to not merge the two into one. 

But the broadside fired against evangelicals as a-contextual and a-historical interpreters of the Bible was quite bold.  I suppose this attack could have lost some of its force if it hadn't came from someone whose view on LGBT issues and so-called marriage equality were changed by deeply contextual, deeply historical and a serious study of the Scriptures.  I mean, how bad would it have been if she would have accused evangelicals as she did and her opinions on this subject were swayed merely by something as a-contextual to the Bible as…well, I don’t know, the opportunity to be around and interact more with the queer community.  Oh, wait….

From the limited amount of information that I have (so my conclusion could be incorrect), it seems to be the case with this author that, like many current and former evangelicals, her former commitment to evangelicalism was primarily one of preference or convenience instead of conviction. 

Harsh?  Maybe

True?  Well…we’ll see. 

A person who was formerly convinced to the point of conviction about specific theological conclusions would have come up with thoughtful and thorough biblical reasons for these conclusions.  Even more so, a leader (as this woman claims to be/have been) in churches and ministries should have had distinctly evangelical convictions nailed down and able to defend them in an evangelical (read biblical) way. 

Foolish ignorance (intentional or not) of what the Bible actually says is not an excuse.  It didn’t work for the people in Jesus’ day, and it won’t work for you today.  And a self-professed theological humility, which is actually great theological hubris, when it comes to the gospel will no more diffuse the judgment of Christ than rigid and non-biblical legalism worked for the Pharisees (I wonder of some Pharisee wannabees had religion minors in college?).  

If you claim to follow Jesus and you’re led away from the evangel, then you’ve lost your way and have taken a wrong turn.  The way of Jesus is the way of the gospel of saving grace. On this path, one of the primary ways that we show love and compassion for those around us – whoever that maybe – is to proclaim the word of God and the gospel of the saving grace of Christ to first help that person see their sin and run to our great savior.

Saturday, June 21, 2014

Unity Does Not Mean Uniformity


(Ephesians 4:7-13)

Undeniable Unity
A significant cog in the wheel of Paul’s message to the Ephesians is that there is now only one unified group of redeemed people.  While it is (and has always been) by faith that any receive the grace of salvation (Eph 2:8,9), there had historically been a sharp division between the Jew and the gentile (Eph 2:12-13).  In the previous chapters, Paul explained how Christ demolished the dividing wall separating Jew from Gentile when He purchased salvation and peace with God through His blood.  This unity culminates in the clear affirmation that all believers, Jew and gentile, all share in one body, Spirit, hope, Lord, faith, baptism, one God and Father of all (Eph 4:4-5).

Definite Diversity
But in the very next verse Paul explains that there is a variation of grace in the unified experience.  The grace here referred is not a saving grace, but a serving grace that is lovingly measured out in accordance with the gift of Christ (Eph 4:7).  “The grace which each believer has received for the discharge of his particular function in the community is proportionate to the gift which he has freely received from his glorified Lord.” (F. F. Bruce, Epistle to the Ephesians, 80)  Paul then gives justification for the fact that Jesus is able to give gifts to His own by quoting the Psalms identifying Jesus as the one who ascended because He first descended. It is because Christ is the ascending victor that He has the authority to give gifts to His people. 

Gracious Gifts
Here is the heart of the passage that, in my experience, seems to get the most attention: the delineation of Spiritual gifts given to the church. It is noteworthy that the gifts described here are persons (i.e. apostles, prophets, evangelists, etc.) whereas the gifts described in 1 Corinthians 12:4-11 are the things given to different individuals (word of wisdom, word of knowledge, faith, etc.).  All five of these gifted individuals would have similar traits and, to a certain degree, overlapping skills, abilities and functions in the church. However, the apostles and prophets had a unique role in the early church related authoritative teaching and in the revelation of God’s Word, in writing and in other forms of teaching.  With the maturation of the church and the dissemination of the gospel, some of the distinctive elements of the apostles and prophets were taken over by the inspired Scriptures of the New Testament. So while these first two gifts were good and necessary for the foundation of the church (cf. Eph 2:19), their role has been fulfilled while the gracious gift of evangelists, pastors and teachers continue to be necessary for the ministry in the church.  The evangelists today would most fit with frontier missionaries who go into areas that have, as yet, been untouched by the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Pastors and teachers refer to men who are elsewhere called bishops or elders and who are tasked with oversight and care for the church. 

Godly Goal
The goal of that Christ has for His gifts is that they will prepare the saints to serve and contribute to the building up of the body of Christ so that ultimately we all will attain to a unity of the faith and knowledge of Christ (v.12). And while we are beginning with one common faith (v.5), the goal of attaining to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of Christ is a bit different.  The common faith that initially identifies the whole body of Christ is the basic childlike confession of faith (cf. v. 14) while the unity of the faith refers to a mature and thorough understanding and knowledge of Christ and the gospel, which serves to deepen and strengthen the faith.  The unity of the faith is not merely the exercise of faith, which unites the body initially, but it is the substance of what the faithful believe.  Furthermore, this is not merely the goal of the individual Christian, but the goal is that spiritual maturity would be what characterizes the “corporate personality of the church.” (Bruce, 86-87)


Summary:

In a Paragraph:  There is an unbreakable unity and unalterable equality for all people on whom the saving grace of Christ is bestowed.  While the grace given for salvation is the same, the grace given for service differs based on the spiritual gift that Christ has given to us.  Christ is able to give gifts to His people, not merely because of the fact that He is God, but because Jesus defeated death and freed to life those who were formerly in bondage to death.  The unified body of Christ, which is growing into a holy temple (Eph 2:21), has been given with many different, but complementary, gifts to achieve the goal of the building up of the body of Christ so that the body, not merely individual members, would become mature in their faith and knowledge of the Son of God. 

In a Sentence: There is diversity in the gifts that Christ gives to the church in order that the whole church would be characterized by maturity in faith and knowledge of the Son of God.