Dynel Lane, the Media and a Contradiction of Terms

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Almost a year ago, a tragedy happened here in Longmont: a pregnant woman responded to a Craigslist ad for free baby clothes, only to be attacked and to have her baby cut from her womb and abducted.

The baby did not survive, and the assailant, Dynel Lane is currently on trial this week in the Boulder District Court, however she is not being charged with murder, but with suspicion of attempted first-degree murder, first-degree assault and child abuse knowingly and recklessly resulting in death and unlawful termination of a pregnancy.

Colorado law does not count the death of an unborn child as murder, only if the child lived outside of the womb for some time. The issue in this case is that it’s not possible to prove how long the child lived outside of the womb – so Colorado’s wording of the law will not allow a murder charge in this case, even though wrongful death is obvious.

Dynel Lane has pleaded not guilty to these charges and has come back saying that it was Michelle Wilkins who attacked and tried to stab her, and that she was only trying to defend herself, and the reason she cut the baby out of Michelle’s womb was because she thought Michelle was dead and was trying to save the baby. This however, gives no explanation for why Dynel Lane told medical personal at Longmont United Hospital that the baby was hers, until they realized that she hadn’t given birth and the baby couldn’t be hers.

You can read Dynel Lane’s testimony here.

Today closing arguments are being presented by both sides.

This case presents a conundrum, not only for the wording of the law, but for the media in telling the story.  As one friend pointed out: The Denver Post reported that Dynel Lane “…cut out Wilkins’ fetus before taking the baby to Longmont United Hospital…”

Did you catch that?  She cut out a “fetus” and then took the “baby” to Longmont United Hospital.

It’s a very careful choosing of words which reflects a fundamental belief: that unborn children are not actually children.

The word they’ve coined to help create this false dichotomy – which this case so painfully exposes – is “fetus.” What’s ironic, is that this is based on a failure to grasp the fact that the word fetus is simply Latin for “young person.”

Fetus is Latin for “young person”

Did you catch that?  Young PERSON.    Not “young mass of tissue, akin more to cancer than to a human being.”

This case presents a conundrum for lawmakers and the media, because it shows that a fetus and a baby are not two separate things. Everyone knows that what this woman did was wrong, because she killed a baby… But if we stick with strictly considering the unborn unhuman, then why is this crime so heinous?

Is a baby only a baby if its mother wants it?   Clearly the answer is no.

I will be interested to see what happens in this case. Hoping for justice for Dynel Lane’s crime and mercy for her soul.

 

Does the Bible Explicitly Condemn Slavery?

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Our men’s Bible study is currently going through Tim Keller’s Gospel in Life group study, and last night’s section was about justice. After listening to Keller’s 10 minute teaching on doing justice and showing mercy to various groups, in our time of discussion, one man brought up something that he said had been bothering him for a while: “With all this talk about doing justice, why doesn’t the Bible explicitly condemn slavery?”

Truly, slavery is a terrible form of injustice, and it is a bit of a black eye on Western culture, that British and American people who considered themselves Christians propagated the African slave trade and even used the Bible to justify it. While it is true that Christians led the charge for abolition, there were many Christians on the other side who argued that the Bible condoned slavery. What are we to make of this, and what does the Bible have to say on this topic?

Linguistic Issues

The Hebrew and Greek words used for “slave” are also the same words used for “servant” and “bondservant.” Essentially, there are two kinds of “slavery” described in the Bible: indentured servitude (a servant who was paid a wage or was working off a debt), and the enslavement of someone against their consent and without pay.

In general, the kind of slavery that the Bible talks about is the first kind (indentured servitude), and parameters are put around it to make sure it is fair and humanitarian – but in Leviticus 25:44-46, the Mosaic law allows for Hebrews to take slaves from the surrounding nations. This seems to be the second form of slavery.

Slavery in Historical Perspective

Slavery was a reality of the ancient world. Hammurabi’s code (2242 BC) discusses slavery, the Hebrews were subject to harsh slavery in Egypt as well as Assyria and Babylon later on. In the middle ages, the Moors enslaved Europeans and sold them in North African slave markets, and later the Norse sold other European peoples as slaves in Scandinavia. Roma (Gypsy) people were sold as slaves in Romania only a few centuries ago, and in our modern time, slavery is still practiced in Darfur in Sudan – as well as many exploited people around the world who live as de facto slaves.

As Christians, we believe that God hates the exploitation of the weak and wants us as His people to fight against it. But how then should we understand Leviticus 25? What about other places in the Bible that talk about slavery?

Slavery in the Bible

Bondservants, i.e. indentured servants, were paid a wage (Colossians 4:1), thus the injunctions that “slaves” obey they masters should be understood as speaking of the relationship between an employee towards their employer. In fact, it was common for educated people, including doctors, lawyers and people of other trades, to be “slaves” of wealthy people – a contractual agreement of employment which one freely entered into and was often limited to a designated period of time, but was sometimes for life. This kind of slavery was not based on race, but economics, and several New Testament writers instruct Christians that a person’s employment status should not affect their standing in the church.

Recently I taught about this at White Fields Church in regard to two of Paul’s travel companions from the church in Thessalonica: one an aristocrat and the other a slave; click here for the audio of that message.

The passage from Leviticus 25:44-46 needs to be understood in relation to the nature of the Mosaic Law. The reason there are some things commanded and permitted in the Old Testament which no longer apply today is because of the nature of the Mosaic Law and the nature of Israel as a nation in the Old Testament. Israel was a political and ethnic entity, with God as their king. It was a theocracy in the truest sense. The Law of Moses contains instructions which apply to all people at all times (the 10 Commandments) as well as civil laws which pertain specifically to Israelite society, much like the civil laws that govern our societies today. Furthermore, God actively asserted his justice upon various nations at various times by allowing or even sending another nation to rule over them and enslave them for a period of time. This happened with Israel specifically in Babylon and Assyria: their time as captives and slaves in those nations was the direct judgment of God upon them. Likewise, God says that he is using the Israelites to judge the Ammonites and other Canaanite peoples during the time of the conquest of Canaan. Thus, the permission to take slaves from the Canaanites during this particular period can be understood in this light, but it does not mean a blanket condoning a the practice of slavery.

Does the Bible explicitly condemn slavery?

If we are talking about the kind of slavery that took place during African slave trade, then the answer is: Yes.

Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death. (Exodus 21:16)

“Man-stealing” or kidnapping someone and selling them into slavery, or purchasing someone who had been enslaved this way, was considered one of the worst kinds of sin, those punishable by death.

This is found in the New Testament as well. In 1 Timothy 1:10, “slave-trading” (also translated as “enslaving,” and “kidnapping”) is listed among the most sinful practices, along with murder.

Philemon

Paul’s letter to Philemon is one of the shortest books in the Bible. Philemon was a wealthy man who had slaves working for him, as most, if not all, wealthy people in the Roman Empire did at that time. One of Philemon’s slaves, Onesimus, had escaped and run away, presumably to Rome. Paul ended up meeting Onesimus during his travels, possibly during his imprisonment in Rome, because Onesimus had come in contact with Christians and had become a Christian himself. As they got to talking, Paul discovered that he actually knew the man who had been Onesimus’ master before he escaped: Philemon was also a Christian. So Paul encouraged Onesimus, who had broken contract, and thereby the law, by running away, to return to Philemon and be reconciled with him, and Paul sent him along with the letter which is now part of the New Testament.

In his letter, Paul instructed Philemon to receive Onesimus not as a slave, but as a brother. Furthermore, he told Philemon that if there was anything that Onesimus owed him, that he would like it charged to his (Paul’s) account, and he himself would compensate him for any loss that he had incurred because of Onesimus. One commentator says of this letter that this attitude towards the institution of slavery shows that from the earliest days, Christians were sewing the seeds to explode the institution of slavery.

William Wilberforce, John Newton and the Christian-led Abolitionist Movement

The Abolitionist movement to end “White” on “black” slavery was spearheaded by William Wilberforce, who was motivated by his Christian faith. In opposing slavery, Wilberforce recognized that the slavery mentioned in the New Testament was a slavery of a different kind than that being practiced by the British and Americans. “Racial” slavery was opposed because it was seen to be contrary to the value that God places on every human being, since all are created in His Image and the fact that God “has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26).

John Wesley supported the work of William Wilberforce to see slavery abolished. In a letter from Wesley to Wilberforce, Wesley described slavery as “execrable villainy.”

Reading this morning a tract wrote by a poor African, I was particularly struck by that circumstance that a man who has a black skin, being wronged or outraged by a white man, can have no redress; it being a “law” in our colonies that the oath of a black against a white goes for nothing. What villainy is this?

February 24, 1791 (6 days before Wesley’s death)

Wesley opposed slavery because he believed the Bible taught the inherent value of every human life, irrespective of one’s skin color or nationality.

John Newton, the hymn writer who wrote “Amazing Grace,” was a captain of slave ships, and actually continued to do so even after his conversion to Christianity because he was convinced by the prevailing attitudes of his time. He later changed his mind and repented of his involvement in the slave trade, becoming an anti-slavery activist who campaigned against it for the latter part of his life. He wrote a pamphlet titled “Thoughts on the African Slave Trade” which that the slave trade was what we would call in our day a “crime against humanity.” For Newton, like Wesley and Wilberforce, it was his Christian faith and the biblical value of human life which was a deciding factor in his opposition to slavery.

Acts 17:26 is interesting in the discussion of the equal value of all human life. It says that God “has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth.” That means that all people, of all nations, of all skin-tones, share the same blood and come from the same origin. Therefore there is no room for looking down on anyone of a particular race or socio-economic class. All human life has value, and as Christians it is our call as the people of God to treat others with dignity.

He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
Micah 6:8

 

Expecting Nothing in Return? Not Usually.

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For a long time, I have found this sentence from Jesus to be both extremely beautiful and terribly convicting:

But love your enemies, and do good, and give, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. (Luke 6:35)

This is the definition of generosity: giving, expecting nothing in return. Nothing.

That means that a generous person doesn’t keep an accounting in their relationships, i.e. a running tally of who has done more for whom. They don’t keep score. They are free from that – free to give, expecting nothing in return.

That’s a lot easier said than done though…

Recently in my conversations with two people, this topic came up. One in particular likes to help people. He’s always helping people and doing favors. Nice, right? Except there’s one problem: he’s become resentful towards some of the people he’s helped out.

The other person explained to me that he likes to buy things for other people, little token gifts. But he too struggles with feelings of resentment, when he feels that his gestures of kindness are not reciprocated.

Both of these people would say that when they do these things, they don’t expect any form of compensation for them, but yet, both of them feel resentful. Why?

At least in the case of the first person, it is because, albeit subconsciously, oftentimes he isn’t just helping for the sake of helping – he’s doing it because there is a form of compensation that he hopes to receive for doing it. In his case it is not money, it is friendship. If and when friendship does not result, he feels that he was involved in a transaction in which the other party did not pay. The only thing is: the other party wasn’t aware of the assumed agreement and didn’t realize it was a transaction.

“Free” is rarely free.

What that means is that some people give a lot, but they’re not generous – because they give for selfish reasons. For example, the Pharisee in Luke 18:9-14 gave a lot to the Temple, but the reason he gave was so that other people would see it and praise him as a good person. His giving was a means of self-justification and self-glorification. The money still went to good use, and it is certainly better to give to a good cause for bad reasons than to spend money wastefully or only on yourself, but God is also concerned about why we give what we give.

Tim Keller, speaking about generosity, says that some people are always doing things to help other people, but they are actually using those people to feel good about themselves – i.e. they need those people to need them. They need for people to think they are good people. It’s their source of identity and their means of trying to justify their life. They’re not doing nice things for other people for the sake of those people themselves as much as they are actually doing it for themselves.

True generosity is when you act from selfless motivation, giving something and expecting nothing in return.

This is what Jesus encourages, saying, “your father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:4)

Again, that is easier said than done. The way we can be motivated to truly act that way is through the message of the Gospel. First of all, the Gospel is that God has been generous to you, not as a transaction, but simply just because He loves you and enjoys blessing you. That’s grace. Secondly, the Gospel gives you an identity: it affirms you, saying that God not only knows you fully, but loves you completely.

Many people believe that they can either be known completely or loved completely, but not both – because if someone really gets to know them, they couldn’t possibly love them. Therefore, in order for people to love them and accept them completely, they cannot possibly allow anyone to know them completely.

But the message of the Gospel is that God BOTH knows you completely and loves you completely – at the same time. That’s incredible love and affirmation.

The message of the Gospel is that you have been justified in Christ, therefore you don’t need to work hard to justify yourself.

And when you really understand that – you’ll be free to give, expecting nothing in return: like God who gives even to the evil and the ungrateful. You’ll be free to give for the sake of giving, for the sake of another person or a cause, with no strings attached, because you are so firm in your identity, that you are already loved and justified and have value. The Gospel sets us free from our ulterior motives in doing even good things and from feelings of resentment towards those we have done acts of kindness for.

 

Spurgeon Quotes

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Charles Spurgeon’s hundreds of sermons are a deep well of eloquent and powerful quotes. Here are a few favorites I recently came across:

Calvinists are often criticized for not considering evangelism an urgent priority, since God is sovereign. Spurgeon was a Calvinist, but these were his thoughts on the importance of diligence in evangelism:

If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to Hell over our dead bodies. And if they perish, let them perish with our arms wrapped about their knees, imploring them to stay. If Hell must be filled, let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go unwarned and unprayed for.

Spurgeon on the gospel which is worth living for, dying for and sacrificing for:

there used to be a gospel in the world which consisted of facts which Christians never questioned. There was once in the church a gospel which believers hugged to their hearts as if it were their soul’s life. There used to be a gospel in the world, which provoked enthusiasm and commanded sacrifice. Tens of thousands have met together to hear this gospel at peril of their lives. Men, to the teeth of tyrants, have proclaimed it, and have suffered the loss of all things, and gone to prison and to death for it, singing psalms all the while. Is there not such a gospel remaining?

Do you have any favorite Spurgeon quotes?  Leave me a comment below.

#SB50 and #Antichoice Doritos Ad

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This past weekend I watched as my Denver Broncos won Super Bowl 50. The last time the Broncos won the Super Bowl I was in high school. They won with their incredible defense, which throughout the year was exciting to watch, especially in the playoffs.

On Tuesday I took my son out of school and went down to Civic Center Park in Denver for the Broncos victory parade. I remember going with my dad to the parade back in 1998, the first time the Broncos won the Super Bowl, now I was taking my kids – it was a cool moment.

Apparently my son was one of an estimated 25,000 students who skipped school to attend the parade. My dad works for the Denver Mint, which is directly behind the City and County Building, where the parade ended and the speeches were given, and he was given liberal leave, not only so that employees could attend the parade, but also because it would have been nearly impossible to even get to the Mint for work.

Authorities verified that over 1 million people attended the parade – and it certainly felt like it. I remember the parade back in ’98, and standing in Civic Center Park, not too far from the stage in the crowd of 650,000. This time the crowd was so much bigger, it was uncomfortable. People packed into the park to the point where there wasn’t even an inch to move.

My wife’s favorite thing about the Super Bowl is that it means that NFL season is finally over and no more will Sundays revolve around Broncos games. For the Super Bowl she decided to give in and wear team colors, so she put on a blue shirt – only to realize she put on Carolina sky blue. Needless to say, we asked her to be the one to take the group photo…

Like many people, Rosemary’s favorite part of the Super Bowl was Coldplay and the commercials. One of our favorite commercials was this Doritos one about an ultrasound:

Kinda creepy, but no creepier than PuppyMonkeyBaby.

I was surprised to see that NARAL, an abortion advocacy group, took issue with the ad, claiming that it was “antichoice” (I didn’t even know that was a word…)

The problem? The ad “humanized” unborn children (whom they refuse to call children…)

What’s next? Will they begin advocating against ultrasounds? Because as ultrasound technology has advanced, we have only found more and more reason to consider yet unborn children fully human: as one spokesperson said:

“If NARAL is scandalized by the notion that a human fetus is human, then they are scandalized by science. We know children in the womb have distinct and human DNA. We also know that they exhibit all sorts of human behaviors in the womb such as yawning, thumb-sucking, and even dancing thanks to tremendous advances in ultrasound technology.

But groups like NARAL and Planned Parenthood rely on a denial of these scientific realities better suited to the Dark Ages to maintain their rabid insistence that those unborn babies are undeserving of basic human rights.”  – Ashley McGuire of The Catholic Foundation

For the most part, I think NARAL is shouting into the wind. Trying to take away a person’s humanity is a long-used method for justifying or coping with doing something wrong to another person.

That being said, I highly doubt Doritos was trying to make a political statement. For NARAL, fetal behavior which reflects their humanness is an inconvenient fact – but a fact nonetheless.

The History of Lent & the Lost Celebration

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I grew up going to a Lutheran school until 8th grade, and one of the highlights of the year was Ash Wednesday, the first day of the season of Lent:  the 40 days leading up to Easter, which is a time of fasting and self-denial in preparation for Easter. On Ash Wednesday we would have chapel service and would get to walk to the front of the church and have ash put on our foreheads in the shape of a cross. Today as I was out around town, I noticed people with these ash crosses on their heads.

Lent is a tradition which predates all Christian denominations, but today is practiced mainly by Roman Catholic, Anglican/Episcopalian, and Orthodox Christians. However, Lent is more and more popular among evangelical Protestants, some of whom long for connection to the rich history of Christian tradition. I ran across a plethora of articles today from sources like Relevant and Christianity Today recommending that evangelicals would benefit from the practice of Lent. I tend to be inclined this way myself: to appreciate and want to be connected to Christianity’s rich traditions and to embrace the meaningful symbolism.

However, I have changed my thinking in recent years about Lent in particular. In seminary I took a course about the history and development of Christian worship. Here’s what I discovered about the development of Lent:

In the earliest days of Christianity, the time recorded in the Book of Acts, it is clear that new converts to Christianity first came to faith and then were baptized. As time went on, Christians began to feel that it was important that not only faith precede baptism, but instruction also. So they began to require believers to go through a period of instruction in Christian doctrines (catechism) before they could be baptized.

Several early Christian writings indicate that new believers would be baptized on Easter, which from the earliest days of Christianity was the chief Christian celebration. One of these writings that mentions baptisms of new believers being practiced only on Easter is from Tertullian, who argues that baptism need not only be practiced on Easter.

The number 40 held special significance for the early Christians because of the significance of the number 40 in the Hebrew scriptures, and so the 40 days leading up to Easter were the days of preparation, instruction and consecration for those who were getting ready to be baptized on Easter.

Easter itself, for the first 400 years of the church, was a feast that did not last only one day, but which began on Easter Sunday and lasted for 40 days. During that 40 days, people were forbidden from fasting, as well as from kneeling when they prayed, as kneeling is a posture of contrition, and these 40 days were set aside for the express purpose of celebrating the new life, the forgiveness and the redemption that we have because Jesus rose from the grave. It was a 40 day season of joy.

But here’s what changed: in the 4th Century, paedobaptism (child or infant baptism) became the norm. Paedobaptism was already a practice of some churches before that; Tertullian, in his On Baptism (circa 200), mentions that some churches practiced it and others did not, but that it was becoming increasingly popular in his time.

The reasons for the rise of paedobaptism were:

  1. Questions about how those who were born into and raised in Christianity should be initiated into the faith, and how this relates to the Old Testament model of a people in covenant with God.
  2. The emergence of Christendom as Christianity had become the official and dominant religion of the Roman Empire, so to be a citizen of the Empire was equated with being “Christian” and it was presumed that everyone who was a citizen of the empire was a Christian.  This view prevailed throughout the medieval period in Europe and was perpetuated by the magisterial Reformers.
    (I have written more on the subject of Christendom here)

  3. The formulation of the doctrine of ‘original sin’ by Augustine of Hippo, which gave many people a rationale for baptizing infants. The reasoning was that since the Nicene Creed declares that there is ‘one baptism for the forgiveness of sins’, that infant baptism remitted original sin (something Augustine did not teach, but which led to parents wanting to have their babies baptized as soon after birth as possible). Thomas Aquinas also taught that baptism removed the guilt of original sin; however, this teaching was rejected by Luther and other Reformers and is not held by all modern adherents of paedobaptism.

But here’s the issue that paedobaptism brought up in the church: If you baptize babies, then you can’t instruct them before you baptize them, because they’re infants… So what do you do with the 40 day period of consecration and preparation leading up to Easter? Hmm…
Here’s what they did: they decided to make this a time of all believers consecrating themselves to God in preparation for Easter, and catechism was moved to adolescence and paired with a confirmation of one’s faith/baptism.

So, here’s what you had at that point:  40 days of consecration to God before Easter – EASTER – 40 days of celebration of salvation and new life after Easter.

But then, guess what happened with time: We kept one 40 day observance and dropped the other. And which one did we choose? Not the celebration, but the consecration… and over time that consecration became more and more dour and focused on self-denial, penance and contrition.

James White writes:

It is perplexing why Christians have forsaken the season of rejoicing in exchange for the season of penance.

Particularly during the medieval period (and vestiges of this remain in our day in some places and to some degree) some Christians became more obsessed with the process of Jesus’ death – his “passion” – than with the purpose of his death.

Taking this into consideration, I am less inclined to celebrate Lent. I believe that I should consecrate myself to God every day. Romans 12:1 says – I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 

However, I do believe that the discipline of self-denial is healthy and very much needed for some people, and that setting apart a dedicated time of consecration is both biblical and good.

In the end it gets down to WHY you are practicing Lent. If it is a spiritual discipline through which you draw nearer to God by purposefully setting aside something in order to consecrate yourself in an amplified way for a particular time – then I think that is wonderful and would recommend that you do it.

No matter what – whether you practice it or not – please remember the history, and along with your 40 days of consecration, I encourage you to practice 40 days of dedicated rejoicing in the salvation and new life that Jesus made available to you.

Celebrating what He did for you should take precedence over focusing on what you do for Him.

 

Something Worth Listening To

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A friend from White Fields Church recently recommended I check out the Eric Metaxas Show podcast. I’ve enjoyed reading Eric’s books and I would highly recommend his biographies of Dietrich Bonhoeffer as well as his shorter 7 Men and 7 Women.

I recently subscribed to the podcast and have been listening to it while I drive. If you’re looking for something good to listen to, I recommend it. Below I’ve embeded an episode to get you started, in which Eric interviews someone from Voice of the Martyrs and talks about the life and legacy of Richard Wurmbrand, a Lutheran pastor who was tortured for his Christian faith in communist Romania and became an advocate for persecuted Christians worldwide.

Another great podcast I’d recommend is the Ask Pastor John podcast with John Piper.

And of course, don’t forget to subscribe to the White Fields Community Church podcast, available in the iTunes podcast store.

If you are looking for a good podcast app for Android, I like Podcast Addict.

Here’s that episode:

About Those Muslims…

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I ran across this factoid in my reading today:

In my experience working with muslim refugees from places like Iran, Afghanistan and Kosovo, I found that many people born and raised in muslim families in majority muslim countries are open to hearing and considering the Gospel – sometimes more open than people in “Christian” Europe and North America.

Many people born and raised in Islam know very little about what the Koran teaches, and for them being muslim is more about cultural identity than theological conviction.

Consider this: the majority of muslims in the world do not speak Arabic, yet the Koran is to be read only in its “pure” form: in Arabic. What this means is that the majority of muslims have not read the Koran for themselves. The largest muslim majority country in the world by population is not even in the Middle East: it is Indonesia, and in Indonesia Christianity is legal, there is a sizable Christian population and there is opportunity for muslim people to hear the Gospel.

Did you know that Christianity is the most culturally and racially diverse religion in the world – by far?!  Every other major faith has 80% or more of its adherents on 1 or 2 continents, but roughly 20% of Christians are in Africa, 20% are in South America, a little less than 20% are in Asia, a little more than 20% are in Europe and North America each.  No other religion even comes close to the ethnic and cultural diversity of Christianity.

One of the differences between Christianity and Islam is that whereas Christianity affirms other cultures and languages, Islam does not. Wherever Islam has spread it imposes a foreign (Arabic) language and culture, including dress, art, music and other forms of expression upon its adherents. Christianity does not; rather Christianity liberates the African to be fully African and the European to be fully European in regard to language, dress, art, music and other forms of cultural expression. Considering the fact that the majority of muslims live outside of the Arabian Peninsula, this is a particularly compelling aspect of Christianity compared to Islam, which has imposed Arabic culture upon people at the cost of suppressing their African, Persian, Indian, etc. forms of cultural expression. For the Arab, while Islam does represent a distinctly Arab cultural expression, the fact remains that for 600 years a strong and healthy, culturally-Arab Christian community thrived in the Middle East, the remnants of which still remain – although they are currently endangered – in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq.

Christians, we have been given a mission which is greater than protecting and preserving our comforts. We have been given a mission to “preach the Gospel to all creatures” and to “make disciples of all nations”.  This includes the 1.6 billion people on around the world who self-identity as muslim. We live in unprecedented times, in which more people raised muslim have come to faith in Jesus Christ in the last 20 years than in the previous 1400 combined. May God do an even greater work in the years to come, and may we share His heart for all people.

God is Not Mad at You…unless He is.

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I took my son to the store on Sunday night to buy some trading cards for a game he plays. As we were walking around the store, a book caught my eye.

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The title: “God is Not Mad at You.” To be fair, I haven’t read this book, however, I did take the time to go and read some reviews of it online to see if my initial assumptions about the message of this book would turn out to be mistaken. It would seem from these reviews that they were not.

Here’s the thing: the author is correct, God is not mad at you…that is unless, of course, He is.

What do I mean?  What I mean is that God is mad at some people – and rightly so! The Bible makes it very clear that God “opposes” some people, and that God considers some people “enemies.”  In fact, “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men” (Romans 1:18) and the objects of His wrath are in fact people (Ephesians 2:1-3)!

After all, isn’t it only right that God should be mad about some things AND at some people?  The Bible, in both Old and New Testaments, makes it explicitly clear that there are things which God abhors, and which we should also abhor, for example: injustice, deceit, abuse. God is mad about these things, and more than that: God is mad at the people who do these things. God is mad at the person who exploits another or takes advantage of them from a position of power. God is mad when children are abused, when women are raped, when racial injustice occurs, and God is mad at the people who do these things.

Here’s the thing: it’s easy for us to say, “Well, yeah, okay, I get what you’re saying: God is mad at the bad guys who do bad things. That makes sense… But aside from those guys, who need to know that what they are doing is wrong and that divine justice is promised, the rest of us need to be comforted and encouraged that God isn’t mad at us – after all, most of us aren’t that bad.” 

The question is: who defines “bad”? And how bad do you have to be to be “bad.”  The Bible says this: “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.” (James 2:10) Furthermore, Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount and the Bible says elsewhere that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” and that “there is none who is good, no not one.”

What this all means that you and I are more sinful than we even realize, and therefore more deserving of God’s wrath than we even know.

But here’s the message of the Gospel: it’s not that you are a good person and therefore God isn’t mad at you – it’s that God LOVES you in spite of your sins and failures and shortcomings so much that He sent Jesus, the Divine Son, to die in your place, and absorb the wrath which you deserved.

What that means is that if you are in Christ, then indeed God is not mad at you – because Jesus became the “propitiation for our sins” (1 John 2:2), which means that he absorbed not only the legal judgment for our sins, but the righteous anger of God toward our sin.

If you are in Christ, then indeed: the message of the Gospel is that God is not mad at you

However, if you are not in Christ, then the Bible says that you are still in your sins. Jesus himself said this: “Unless you believe that I am He (the Messiah, the Savior), you will die in your sins.” (John 8:24). And if you are still in your sins, then the wrath of God remains on you!  Again, Jesus himself said this very thing: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.” (John 3:36)

Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them. – JESUS (John 3:36)

Here’s the point: God is not mad at you IF you are in Christ, because God’s wrath was poured out on Him in place of you – the undeserving in place of the deserving.  Apart from Jesus, however, there is no such promise and no such hope.

The reason I take issue with this book is because it declares something to all people as a blanket statement, a broad generalization, which does indeed apply to some, but only some! To others, therefore, it gives a false sense of comfort and security, which actually does them a disservice.

The false prophets in the day of Jeremiah did the same thing. God had called Jeremiah to call the people of Judah to radical repentance, to turn away from sin and wickedness and turn with their whole hearts to God, and if they did that they would experience blessing. Jeremiah preached this message, which turned out to be radically unpopular, despite the fact that it was from God.  At the same time, another group of prophets came with a message which was wildly popular, despite the fact that it wasn’t from God! Their message? “Don’t worry; be happy. God’s not mad at you. God just wants you to be happy, so just do your thing and don’t bother yourself with feelings of guilt or needing to repent.” About these false prophets, God said:  “They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.” (Jeremiah 6:14)

“They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.” (Jeremiah 6:14)

The message of the Gospel is that Jesus died on the cross, so that God could end sin without ending us.

No matter who you are or what you’ve done, that is how much God loves you. If you are in Christ, if you have put your faith in Jesus as your Savior, as your righteousness, as the propitiation for your sins and as your Redeemer – then indeed, take comfort: God is not mad at you!

Thoughts at New Year

Published on by nickcadyLeave a comment

The new year is an interesting time – because it is somewhat of an arbitrary holiday; we are not celebrating a person or a great historical event. All we’re really celebrating, other than the fact that the Earth went all the way around the sun and now we have to go replace our calendars…

The value of the new year is that it gives us a gauge to measure by, it gives us perspective, and perspective helps us to see things more clearly.

The new year also comes with a sense of a new beginning – something which, as Christians, we can have a sense of each and every day because of God’s grace.

I’m not in the habit of making New Year’s resolutions, but there is one thing I do every year, which I find helpful: I sit down and write a list of things which I would like to see in one year from now. These are things which are not yet reality, but things which I would like to see become reality. Having written these things down, I keep that list on my desk, and pray and plan over these things until they become reality. Having this list helps direct my prayers and my focus, my time and my energy.

Zig Ziglar famously said: “If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time.”

We have a big God, with whom all things are possible (Mark 10:27) – a God who is able to do exceedingly, abundantly more than we can ask or imagine. (Ephesians 3:20). I encourage you to dream and pray in faith for those things which are yet unseen. Write them down, so that you won’t quickly forget them because of the tyranny of the urgent that creeps into our lives. At the end of the year, you will find yourself with a list of things which God has done.