Two Dangerous Legal Situations in the Works Right Now

A want to direct your attention to two legal situations that every Christian should be aware of, pray for, and take action on.

First, the Obama administration is considering rescending the Conscience Clause.

CNN article here

ACLJ (American Center for Law and Justice), a Christian legal agency gives you a chance to sign a petition.

Second: on the international level, the UN is in talks with the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) which has introduced the Defamation of Religions Resolution. This resolution is truly an attempt to silence any anti-Islamic voices.

Read More here

AIDS Experience by World Vision

The World Vision Experience: AIDS, is a free exhibit and will be hosted at ASU West in Glendale, AZ March 15 – 22.  This sounds like an amazing experience, and I hope some of the high school students I work with will go.  Bethany and I are going to attend on March 15th.  We will be carpooling from the Queen Creek area around 5pm.  Let me know if you are interested in traveling with us or meeting us there.  You can see a trailer below:

Growing Awareness

Ever since my wife Bethany and I began our process of adopting our hearts have been opened to issues we were aware of before, but (speaking for myself) were sadly unmoved by.  In the past few months my knowledge of some of the global crises that impact children has grown, and my desire to do something about things has increased too.  Besides adopting, I am often at a loss to what God is inviting us to do.  I do believe, however, that one of the things God has encouraged me to do is to talk, share, and invite others to seek out ways that God may invite them to engage in His mission to bring the good news of Jesus to the world.

One part of this missional calling we have as Christians is to truly embody the good news of Jesus.  We don’t just share a story of good news, but our Spirit-filled, transformed inside-out lives should excite interest in others who are searching for the kind of abundant life that Jesus makes available to all those who abide in him.

With this in mind, I’ve found a theme for this blog, and an inspiration to write.  For those friends who will grace me with their time to read my hope is that God will do for you what He has begun to do for me.  To expand both our concern for the world, and our faith that Jesus can and will empower us with his world-changing good news.

Where the Streets Have No Name (part 3)

Have you read part 1 and part 2 already?

From the song by U2:

I wanna run, I want to hide
I wanna tear down the walls
That hold me inside.
I wanna reach out
And touch the flame
Where the streets have no name.

We have a longing for a place, a way of life, for a reality that exhibits a different kind of justice…a different integrity that the world we observe around us when good so often looses to evil and our lives are broken even though we long for wholeness.  This can be an individual desire and it can be a corporate or national one.

In the last entry I left showing the repetition within the early Jewish narrative of exile and return, slavery and  freedom, running away and coming back home.  All of this lead toward an expectation for justice: for a putting of the world to rights.  The hope for this change was nationalistic, and was centered in the prophetic figure of the Messiah.

Jump to the public ministry of Jesus, and the whisperings and murmurings: could this be the one?  The eye-witness reports of the miracles he was working were quickly spreading many wondered whether this could be Israel’s King.  Maybe God would once again make Israel great, and defeat it’s new Babylon (Rome).  Oddly, especially to his disciples, Jesus seemed more interested in a mysterious death, and while he talked about a Kingdom of God, he seemed disinterested in any political or military power.  Then, more sudden than his rise to regional fame, he was killed.  Crucified.  The immediate effect on his disciples defeat: they had backed the wrong horse.  Jesus was not the Messiah, because he was just executed by the power that (they thought) the Messiah would over turn.

Then it happened.  An event that is Christianity.  Without it the word, the people, the religion don’t exist.  Resurrection.  The dead teacher, and possible Messiah was dead no more, but walking around in his old skin again.  His body was different somehow– better somehow.  Let me be clear: Jesus’ resurrection is the event that defines Christianity.  Before it the movement of Jesus’ followers was dead before it had hardly begun.  After it, a powerful force was launched upon the world.   Suddenly Jesus was back alive again, his old body having been transformed, and this reality was the catalyst, the truth that shaped the thinking of his followers.

So with Christmas here, I want to remind us to remember Easter.  The fact of Jesus resurrection lead to the biblical hope that became Christianity: God is the one God who made the world, and Jesus is that world’s Lord.  Having died for forgiveness of fallen men, he was resurrected– defeating the powers of evil and even death itself.  Further more, the future promise in the New Testament is that like Jesus, all of creation will be renewed someday, including all who are children of God.

So while Israel was waiting for God’s Messiah who would save them, God was working out his plan to save the world through Israel’s Messiah.  And like the history of his people, the theme of exile and return recurs in Jesus.  For though he accomplished his task, and the power of sin has been defeated, he left with the job incomplete.  For our world is still broken and our lives like it are too.  Yet the promise, given supreme confidence by his resurrection, is that Jesus will return again, the second time with power and as King.  The Savior of the world who is also it’s Lord, will return to claim all that is His.

Now, in parting I want to point out a part of this truth that is ignored by many Christians.  The hope of the resurrection which is the hope of the New Testament is not the escapist hope that many of us Christians in the US hope for.  Perhaps your future hope is that someday you will die and go to heaven?  Sounds good, right?  The only problem is that it ignores the overwhelming weight of the New Testament that points not to our escaping this evil world, but rather to Jesus’ return to this world at a time when God will renew it.  And instead of our hope being to go home into some spiritual rest in heaven, Jesus will be coming home to us where he will reign over his new creation.

There is so much to be said here, but I will leave you with a clip from 1 Corinthians 15 where Paul lays out his (and mine and our) hope.

1 Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance [fn1] : that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Peter, [fn2] and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

9 For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them–yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. 11 Whether, then, it was I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.

12 But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15 More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

20 But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21 For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. 22 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. 23 But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. 24 Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. 25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 27 For he “has put everything under his feet.” Now when it says that “everything” has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. 28 When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.

Merry Christmas, and remember that Jesus wasn’t a baby for long.  Remember too that he will come back again.

Regrettably Lacking in Regret

As I watched the first presidential debate between Senators McCain and Obama I sat up awaiting the candidates response to one question posed by moderator Jim Lehrer possibly more than any of the others. “Much has been said about the lessons of Vietnam, what do you see as the lessons of Iraq?”

John McCain’s response centered on the importance for solid strategy that is necessary to win, and to bring troops home with victory and with honor. Obama began his answer stated that over this issue he and McCain have a fundamental difference. He stated that he opposed the war in Iraq six years ago, and why. What neither candidate even hinted at is what troubles me as I look ahead to one of these two men taking the role of commander-in-chief.

As a Christian whose worldview includes a God who created the world, and loves the people of all nations of the world so much that he gave his only son to die to save them, I have wrestled with the war in Iraq. I don’t take lightly the over 4,000 men and women who have given their lives in Iraq to serve in this nation’s armed forces. But neither can I pass over the deaths of Iraqi civilians during the past 6 years, and am stunned as estimates range in the hundreds of thousands. “…what do you see as the lessons of Iraq?”

Can we please debate the titanic shift in foreign policy that moved from a policy of just war, to one accepting and marketing preemptive war? How I would have LOVED to hear either candidate take the opportunity afforded by such a question to at least allude to the idea that maybe, just maybe, there is a moral lesson to have learned from this engagement that might compel him to take our nation on a different path if we can manage to get out of Iraq, as McCain spoke: “with honor.” And if we can so leave Iraq, will this next president feel any moral burden from the hundreds of thousands of lives lost and injured in this current war? Is there any regret, any remorse for either candidate, or are the only lessons learned strategic in nature?

I guess there remains a part of me that deeply wants to sense in the next president of my beloved nation a moral greatness that would take such a question and respond with a depth of wisdom and concern that makes me want to get off my seat and applaud thinking “there’s someone who get’s it!”  Instead I sighed in disappointment and sat back in my seat again unimpressed.