|
|
|
||||
|
63 <previous< Issue
064 Volume 13 No 2 Spring 2007 >next>
|
|
Table of Contents - Spring 2007
“Cancer
Saved Your Life!”
Note: In response to your many cards, calls, and inquiries about my recent surgeries, this article attempts to explain and interpret these events. For your prayers and concern we are grateful. Strange words uttered by my urologist two days after my heart by-pass surgery and one week after he had removed my prostate gland and joyfully reported only a small cancer in the gland, but none in the margins, the lymph nodes, or the seminal ducts. However,
that was just the prelude.
Let Them Grow Together What we call the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares (Mt 13:24-30) is a little story that Jesus told, based on first century Palestinian farm life, about what to do with some weeds that threatened to ruin a crop. He did not tell such tales to entertain his hearers but as a way to communicate with them in a context of controversy. Indeed, the seven parables clustered in Matthew 13 were in response to the mounting conflicts recorded in Matthew 11-12.
To skeptics with closed minds that made it hard for them to give his message a
hearing, Jesus reached for fresh images, clear comparisons, even curious riddles
in an effort to prompt them to think in different categories. This account, for
example, is full of surprises, many of them deliberately enigmatic despite the
fact that they are rooted in ordinary experience. So beware: if this
sermon is true to the strategy of Jesus, it may try to slip up on your blind
side, breech your defenses, and provoke you to ponder some challenging
perspectives that you might prefer to ignore. We begin, as did Jesus, with a
story that is not easily understood or forgotten.
Bread and Bibles
Almost every day for over thirty years, I have thought of a woman I met three decades ago. She exemplifies the power of one person to make a difference in the lives of thousands. Whenever I read of wars, destruction, poverty, mayhem, tragedy, and man’s inhumanity to man—I think of her. The memory of her heroic deed encourages me.
On a beautiful spring Sunday morning in 1969, in Communist Poland I was speaking
in the Warsaw Baptist Church. Their gifted pastor, Reverend Pawlik, who spoke
fluent English, hosted my visit and interpreted my message to his congregation
that day.
Capital Punishment: A Pastoral
Perspective Serving as a pastor in rural Texas I am often confronted with remnants of frontier justice. Many of my church members own handguns, and not all of the handgun owners are male, I might add. Until recently a local eatery prominently displayed a photograph entitled, “The Last Hanging in Kaufman County.” And at least one Bible study on the Sermon on the Mount concluded with an argument over whether shooting a would-be thief constituted un-Christian behavior. While I do not own a gun, did not approve of the eatery’s photograph, and argued against shooting the thief, my church has accepted me nonetheless. But nothing
could have prepared me for the day that the sister and niece of one of my church
members were murdered in cold blood. On Asking
Too Much
The
quote above comes from Philip Berrigan’s autobiography, Fighting the Lamb’s
War: Skirmishes with the American Empire. On May 17th, 1968 Phillip, the first
Catholic priest in North America to have ever been arrested for civil
disobedience, and his brother Dan (also a Catholic priest), along with seven
others walked into the draft board in Catonsville, Maryland, and proceeded to
burn draft files. After that, they said prayers and submitted themselves to the
government and were eventually sentenced to time in a federal prison. Rather
than spend their lives just writing and talking about theology, they decided to
perform it. In an attempt to expose to North American Christians the idolatry
often demanded of governments, especially in times of war, the Berrigan
brothers chose to burn draft files with homemade napalm to symbolically show
what was being used on both combatants and civilians in Vietnam. The response
of the Federal government to the Berrigan’s confirmed their suspicions: For
burning paper, you serve time in jail; for burning humans, you’re a national
hero. Evangelicals
on the Left? How Shocking! How Awful! Martin Marty recently wrote about evangelicals from his vantage point outside evangelicalism—but within the fellowship of those he likes to call the “original evangelicals,” namely, Lutherans. From within (latter-day) evangelicalism, then, I offer this second observation of this burgeoning movement. I have been wondering why people both within and without evangelicalism are so surprised—and sometimes even upset—about the emergence of a “non-right-wing” evangelicalism in America. For example, the executive
of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) recently endorsed a document
produced by a group called Evangelicals for Human Rights that condemns the use
of torture, and it calls on the United States government in particular to
forswear its use. This action, coming after last year’s declaration of concern
about global climate change by evangelicals as prominent as Rick “Purpose
Driven” Warren, has aroused shock and awe among many on the right who had
previously enjoyed arrogating the term “evangelical” entirely to themselves.
Updated Wednesday, May 30, 2007 |
COMING SOON! Christian Ethics Today Email Journal What Is It? A weekly email article, book review, and sometimes poetry sent out to our readers who request it during the two months between each CET Journal Issue. Why Do We Need It? Due to our bi-monthly schedule and large number of submissions, many good articles are not published in CET because of lack of space. In addition, some submissions speak to an issue that needs immediate publication—in four to six weeks (when the next issue is due), it becomes irrelevant or dated. Who Can Receive It? Like the Journal, anyone who requests it can receive it. What Does It Cost? Again, like our Journal, it is free of charge to anyone requesting it. However, the costs of this new program are provided by the recent grant from the Piper/CIOF Foundation of Waco, Texas, as one of three projects supported. How Do I Subscribe? Simply call, email us, or click on at the website link and provide your email address. We are beginning with about 1000 emails received from our present Christian Ethics Today reader list. How Do I Unsubscribe? Every issue will give directions for anyone to have their email removed from our list with one simply click to “Unsubscribe.” CD-ROM OF ISSUES 1-59 All 60 Issues From 1995-2006 How would hyou like to have every issue of Christian Ethics Today since its inception in 1995 through the Winter Issue of 2006, all on one CD? Through the gracious provision of a benefactor, we are able to provide this CD for anyone who contributes $50 or more to the ministry of CET. Previous book offers by Valentine, Barnette, and the Trulls are also available for the same donation. Write, call, or email us and we will gladly send your choice.
FRIENDS OF
FOY VALENTINE A total of $169,100 has been given by 115 persons to provide endowment for the future ministry of Christian Ethics Today, in memory of our founder Foy Valentine. Only the interest from this fund will be used, as deemed necessary by the Board of Directors. You are invited to contribute to this Memorial Fund. What Is God
Doing About Evil? A man was concerned about his elderly father. The father lived alone in a basement apartment in the city and was engaged in a set of practices that disturbed his son. Whenever the son came for a visit he would see that his father had been out rummaging around in the trash and had brought home odd bits of other people’s rubbish. The elderly man would retrieve someone’s broken toaster, a worn-out coffee pot, a busted tri-cycle, and so-forth and would dump the refuse in the middle of his floor. Daily he would accumulate more and more of other people’s tossed-away junk and bring it home. He would then arrange the items in some precise manner and secure them to one another with wire, string, or unraveled coat-hangers. “Why are you doing this,” the son would ask? “If I don’t,” the father replied, “the world will fall apart.” Needless to
say, such a response disturbed the son who, after repeated but unsuccessful
attempts at reasoning with his father, determined that his father must be
placed in some secure institution for his own good. The son contacted a social
worker who was to visit the father in his basement apartment to evaluate his
condition. Of course when the social worker visited the father he saw for himself
the odd conglomeration of useless items strung together with wire, string, and
unraveled coat-hangers. “Why are you doing this,” the social worker asked? “If
I don’t,” the father replied, “the world will fall apart.” That was good enough
for the social worker and the father was committed into the hands of
professional care-givers that very day. The
Woman Was Right Junia, we hardly knew ya. But thanks to Rena Pederson’s new book The Lost Apostle: Searching for the Truth About Junia [San Francisco: Josey-Bass, 2006], amateur Bible students can catch up on the scholarly debate about whether an early church leader lauded in the Book of Romans was a woman. A former Dallas Morning News editorial page editor, Ms. Pederson went at her research like an old pro, tracking down leading New Testament experts and going to Rome to understand better the early Christian community there. She
said she spent three years on the book, devoting nearly all her evenings and
weekends.
John Calvin
3:16-21
For God so loved the elect, that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever of the elect believeth in Him shall not perish in the fire God created for those he hath predestined to burneth for all eternity, but have everlasting life. For God sent his Son into the world to condemn the heathen to hell and save only those who acknowledge they have no choice but to repent and do exactly as God says. Whosoever
be amongeth the elect is not condemned, but whosoever is among the damned
stands condemned already because God’s sovereignty wills it. Movie Reviews
Book Reviews |
|
|
