Monday Morning Music Ministry

5-7-12

Did you hear enough about the Titanic last month? I didn’t! I actually was surprised that there were not more memorials and anniversary events on the hundredth anniversary of its sinking. It is something that will forever attract people’s attention – fascination, always-fresh horror, disgust, and admiration.

There was another anniversary this past week – of the formal service, a century ago, in honor of one of the ship’s greatest heroes, and most forgotten men.

Major Archibald Butt had been military aide to President Theodore Roosevelt and, after TR’s retirement, to President William Howard Taft. “Archie” was a remarkable man, a combination military aide, social secretary, confidant, political scout, diplomat… and friend. He was like a family member to the Roosevelts. He was just as loyal to Taft, and one could add the trait of protectiveness, for the hapless Taft was narcoleptic, negligent of many duties, careless about political maneuvers. Archie often interceded with whispered advice or behind-the-scenes discretionary moves.

As 1912 approached, many Republicans, disappointed with Taft, wanted Roosevelt to run again. The growing animosity between TR and Taft placed Archie Butt in an excruciating position: he was devoted to the person of Roosevelt, loyal to the office of Taft. Soon his nerves began to wear. President Taft almost insisted that Archie take a leave from office… perhaps join his friend Francis Millet, the famous artist, for a trip to Rome.

Butt and Millet made the trip, and worked their way up the continent to return to America on the marvel of the age, The Titanic.

Some interviews with survivors included:

“When the order to man the boats came, the captain whispered something to Major Butt … the Major immediately became as one in supreme command. You would have thought he was at a White House reception. A dozen or more women became hysterical all at once, as something connected with a life-boat went wrong. Major Butt stepped over to them and said, ‘Really, you must not act like that; we are all going to see you through this thing.’ He helped the sailors rearrange the rope or chain that had gone wrong and lifted some of the women in with a touch of gallantry. Not only was there a complete lack of fear in his manner, but there was the action of an aristocrat.

“When the time came, he was a man to be feared. In one of the earlier boats, fifty women, it seemed, were about to be lowered, when a man, suddenly panic-stricken, ran to the stern of it, Major Butt shot one arm out, caught him by the back of the neck and jerked him backward like a pillow… ‘Sorry,’ said Major Butt, ‘women will be attended to first or I’ll break every damned bone in your body.'”

Another survivor said, “The boats were lowered one by one, and as I stood by, my husband said to me, ‘Thank God for Archie Butt.’ Perhaps Major Butt heard it, for he turned his face towards us for a second and smiled. Just at that moment, a young man was arguing to get into a life-boat, and Major Butt had a hold of the lad by the arm, like a big brother, and telling him to keep his head and be a man. Major Butt helped those poor frightened steerage people so wonderfully, so tenderly and yet with such cool and manly firmness that he prevented the loss of many lives from panic. He was a soldier to the last. He was one of God’s greatest noblemen, and I think I can say he was an example of bravery even to men on the ship.”

Another interview read:

“His last goodbye was smilingly said to Miss Marie Young, formerly a music teacher to some of the Roosevelt children. Miss Young had frequently met Maj. Butt at the White House. She was on the last boat to leave.

“‘Maj. Butt escorted me to a seat in the bow,’ she said …. ‘He helped me find a space, arranged my clothing about me, stood erect, doffed his hat and smiled and said Good-bye. And then he stepped back to the deck, already awash. As we rowed away we looked back, and the last I saw of him he was smiling and waving his hand to me.'”

Roosevelt and Taft alike were devastated. At the memorial service for Archie, in Georgia, Taft could hardly keep his composure. He said something that any person would be proud to have said about him: “When I heard the ship had sunk, I knew Archie must have perished. As long as there was one other person alive on deck, Archie Butt would have made sure that person received preference to himself.”

We are reminded of Christ’s words, “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life…” In Archibald Butt’s case, there also was the matter of duty. His story, and others, provide some of the compelling reasons that The Titanic disaster will always speak to us.

Another story that has lived in legend is that the ship’s band, a string quartet, played music, heroically, calmly, almost stoically abstract, until The Titanic sank beneath the icy surface. They played the old hymn, “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” Again: What were people made of a hundred years ago? Would we see their like today? Perhaps: we remember Todd Beamer – “Let’s roll!”

Then, as now, and throughout human history, the God component always seems to be a part of these stories. “Nearer, my God, to Thee.” That old hymn was on President McKinley’s lips when he died of an assassin’s bullet; and countless others have been blessed by the words.

“If on joyful wing, cleaving the sky,
Sun, moon, and stars forgot, upwards I fly,
Still all my song shall be:
Nearer, my God, to Thee.”

Births… death… times of crisis and stress… It only feels at those life-moments that we are closest to God because… we are. Better put, He is closest to us. Best put, at those moments we make ourselves aware of His presence. He is always there.

Have you ever wished that sometimes God would shout instead of whisper, when we need reassurance, or guidance? The real problem is not with His voice, but with our ears, our hearts. The next time you face a crisis – God forbid it be as grave as The Titanic’s passengers, but if so, may we all comport ourselves as honorably as Major Butt – hear His words. Remember His promises. Listen for His sweet music.

The Titanic fared ill against an iceberg. But many of its passengers were standing on a solid rock nonetheless.

+ + +

Here is an amazing performance of the haunting melody of this classic hymn. Andre Rieu, soloist and conductor of more than 400 brass players, a large orchestra, and a larger chorus.

Click: Nearer, My God, to Thee

+ + +

A friend has written a book, to be published soon, about The Titanic’s fateful voyage, through the prism of the unique social conventions – afternoon teas and society’s customs – that largely disappeared from our culture when the great ship did. It is an informative book, and useful (recipes and info about tea) from a recognized expert, Penelope Carlevato.

Click: www.TeaOnTheTitanic.com

4-23-12

This week, two iconic figures of American culture, both of whom made their marks in the 1970s, died. Chuck Colson was a powerful political operative, convicted felon in the Watergate scandal, and then a leading force in the evangelical church. Levon Helm grew up in Turkey Scratch, Arkansas; played various – and “fused” – forms of country, folk, blues, and gospel music; was a major member of “The Band” that backed Bob Dylan; and became an inspiration to two generations of singers and songwriters.

There is no case to be made for “ideological bookends,” or the irony of two enemies in the culture wars: that is not the fabric I wish to weave. These two men did not face off 40 years ago; Levon, for instance, was not even a part of any major protest movement in the pop music of his day, otherwise a common association.

The lives of these two men, different as they were, offer, I think, powerful lessons for countrymen they leave behind. Their names were seldom paired in a sentence before this week, but should be in a certain way.

They showed us that how you live is important. But how you die is more important.

Colson’s story has become the stuff of legend (in fact, his autobiography, Born Again, was made into a movie): powerful Washington lawyer; connections; joined the Nixon Administration, where his official duties included communication with lobbyists and interest groups, and political strategy, and his unofficial duties included dirty tricks and monitoring “enemies.” He was involved in Watergate and the cover-up, but was convicted of complicity in a break-in and scheme to discredit an anti-war opponent. Colson served time in prison.

Having read C S Lewis’s Mere Christianity, he gave his life to Christ. He witnessed to other inmates in jail. Colson founded Prison Fellowship after his release, and ever after toiled for prisoners’ rights, visitation reform, assistance to families of prisoners, and chapel programs. He founded an institute to enable Christians to be informed and effectively work in today’s society. He became an ardent, and thoughtful, foe of post-modernism. Prison Fellowship, as an evangelical outreach, is active in 114 countries; my son-in-law’s father ministers weekly in Ireland as part of the team there.

Levon Helm, in another corner of the culture, worked in many fields of music as a singer, mandolinist, drummer, and composer (“The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”). His dedication to roots music began in the 1960s and ‘70s. He also acted in “Coal Miner’s Daughter” and “The Right Stuff.” Battling painful cancer of the vocal cords for more than a decade before his death this week, he continued to perform until a couple months ago. Sometimes without singing. Sometimes digging deep, from somewhere, finding the strength and the pipes to sing some lyrics. Amazing. As always.

More and more he came to concentrate on old-time country, gospel, mountain music, and rural blues. This son of a cotton farmer represented something I have long held about the value of tradition, race, and nationhood: no matter where you roam, or how much you explore, or what faraway places you might live in, the best journey is that whose end is right where you started.

Chuck Colson returned to his Savior. Levon Helm returned to his musical roots. What really united this unlikely pair, in my eyes, was that they each completely sold out to the things they loved and knew. Their passion knew no bounds. They each died in the saddle, so to speak – Chuck’s brain hemorrhage came while he was speaking to a church group; Levon performed at his house (“Midnight Rambles”) in Woodstock right to the end. How many of us have that passion… and live with that passion?

We cannot be too sad when people like this leave us. They lived worthwhile lives to the fullest, enduring much even amidst their joy. No less a person than William F Buckley, for instance, doubted and mocked Colson’s conversion at first. Helm felt betrayed by members of The Band and sometimes met resistance to his mixed bag of roots music. But in a sense, passionate fighters like these men did not just die – they LIVED. How they lived is important, but to the rest of us, how they died might be more important.

+ + +

A predictable number in Levon’s stage show was the great Carter Family gospel song “No Depression in Heaven.” Purposely, the lyrics were ambiguous about economic or emotional depression – because neither will be there, in God’s place. Here is a stage version from a couple years ago with Levon on the mandolin and the great Larry Campbell among backup, and Sheryl Crow on lead vocals. Great lyrics.

Click: No Depression in Heaven

2-20-12

On President’s Day this is a topic that has relevance, perhaps more so when “social issues” inhabit headlines. Lest we judge, lest we be judged, we should acknowledge that it is an open question with no definitive answer, yet a fit topic for discussion. In the end, addressing who might have been the most observant president would hew closer to historical evidence and verifiable records.

I addressed the topic last President’s Day, it proved to be the most popular – or at least the recipient of the most “hits” and reactions – in the three years I have been blogging and writing devotional essays. Are people hungry for intellectual “parlor games”… or wanting to connect the dots between political leaders and Christian faith?

First: Presidents’ Day is a holiday one of whose aspects I abhor: its mush-brained attempt at “inclusiveness.” Beyond a thank-you for the time certain presidents served, and sacrifices they probably made – already covered by various grade schools named for them, and the pensions they received – simply doing one’s job should not be justification for a federal holiday.

To honor all is a way of honoring none. For historical saps like James Buchanan, sharing a national holiday with Abraham Lincoln is to knock the latter off a pedestal. Historical accidents like John Tyler and Millard Fillmore should not be mentioned in the same hemisphere as George Washington. Some few presidents did great things in great ways.

The impetus for President’s Day was provided by unions and retailers, who desired another long weekend on the standard calendar. The result? Our civic saints live in the popular image, now, as Abe Lincoln impersonators hawking used cars on TV commercials; and George Washington (his talking portrait on animated dollar bills), not the Father of His Country, but the Father of the President’s Day Weekend of Unbelievable Bargains and Sales.

Americans used to reject, but now embrace, the Marxian mindset of mediocrity – every thing, and every one, must be leveled. In America today we pull down some of humankind’s greatest figures, like Washington and Lincoln, in order to – what? not hurt the feelings of Franklin Pierce and Chester Alan Arthur? There’s a lesson for our school children: grow up to become president, have a pulse, and you, too, will have post offices close a day in your honor.

Obviously I am eager to honor Washington and Lincoln, whose birthdays, this month, officially have been homogenized, as have their reputations. I do honor them, frequently, in my writing, and in discussions, and conversations with children, and in my reading and my studies. So should we all do with people and causes that we revere, even more urgently when the culture obscures them from our vision.

In my case I hold Theodore Roosevelt in particular regard. Last October my biography of him, BULLY! (Regnery History, 440 pages, illustrated entirely by vintage political cartoons), was published, and I devoted a chapter to TR’s faith. (Indeed, I am working on a full book on the theme.) One thing I have come to appreciate about TR is something that largely has been neglected by history books. That is, the aspect of his fervent Christian faith. In some ways, he might be seen as the most Christian and the most religious of all presidents; and by “religious” I mean most observant.

This is (admittedly) a subjective list, and a difficult one to compute and compile. TR’s name at the top of the list might surprise some people, yet that surprise would itself bear witness to the nature of his faith: privately held, but permeating countless speeches, writings, and acts. (A step out of character for this man who otherwise exhibited most of multi-faceted personality to the world!) His favorite verse was Micah 6:8 – “What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”

He was of the Dutch Reformed Church. He participated in missions work with his father, a noted philanthropist. He taught weekly Sunday School classes during his four years at Harvard. He wrote for Christian publications.

He called his bare-the-soul speech announcing his principles when running in 1912, “A Confession of Faith.” Later he closed perhaps the most important speech of his life, the clarion-call acceptance of the Progressive Party nomination that year, with the words, “We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord!” That convention featured evangelical hymns and closed with “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

He titled one his books Foes of Our Own Household (after Matthew 10:36) and another, Fear God and Take Your Own Part. He once wrote an article for The Ladies’ Home Journal, “Nine Reasons Why Men Should Go To Church.” After TR left the White House, he was offered university presidencies and many other prominent jobs. He chose instead to become Contributing Editor of The Outlook, a relatively small Christian weekly magazine.

He was invited to deliver the Earl Lectures at Pacific Theological Seminary in 1911, but declined due to a heavy schedule. Knowing he would be near Berkeley on a speaking tour, however, he offered to deliver the lectures if he might be permitted to speak extemporaneously, not having time to prepare written texts of the five lectures, as was the school’s customary requirement. It was agreed, and TR spoke for 90 minutes each evening – from the heart and without notes – on the Christian’s role in modern society.

… and so on. TR was not perfect, but he knew the One who is. Fond of saying that he would “speak softly and carry a big stick,” it truly can be said, also, that Theodore Roosevelt hid the Word in his heart, and acted boldly. He was a great American because he was thoroughgoing good man; and he was a good man because he was a humble believer.

Remember Theodore Roosevelt on President’s Day. Remember him on his own birthday, Oct 27. Remember him every day – we are not seeing his kind any more.

+ + +

Not a song or hymn this week, but a video clip. From the great movie The Wind and the Lion: “The world will never love the US; it might respect us; it might come to fear us; but it will never love us.” A wonderful portrayal of Theodore Roosevelt by Brian Keith in John Milius’s 1975 motion picture.

Click: The Affinity of America and the Grizzly Bear

2-13-12

A political season can get people thinking about promises – promises for the future (by candidates we like) and the potential of broken promises (by those whom we don’t). When I was a kid I wrote a fan letter to Walt Kelly, the cartoonist of “Pogo,” who sent a drawing of Albert the Alligator’s platform as a political advisor: “I promise you voters to not promise anything. And if I do make a promise, I promise not to keep it.”

That would be refreshing, really. But the problem with promises is not politics or politicians – it’s human nature; which, I promise you, will never change on its own.

Truth is something we all must confront, and deal with. Even Pontius Pilate, yielding to public pressure, desperately trying by symbolism to wash his hands of the guilty act of condemning an innocent man to die, looked at Jesus, probably knowing better than the mob did Whom he addressed. He asked, “What is Truth?” People don’t ask such questions of criminals or strangers or even politicians, of Pilate’s day or our own day.

One aspect of human nature is that when we are confronted with Truth, it frequently is our tendency not to change ourselves or our habits, but to bend truth, explain it away, weaken it, even deny it. Heretics through the history of Christianity, “relativists” in philosophy, and leaders of the Emergent movement on the fringes of today’s religion, all have tacked adjectives to the word “truth.” They give us relational truth, conditional truth, relative truth… everything except the firmly rejected Absolute Truth. Which the Bible teaches. And what God IS. And what Jesus embodied – “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”

I have noticed that a lot of Christians can be timid about the truth, and frequently they justify it by not wanting to offend non-believers. Some even think that being too bold with the truth about God – maybe at first, anyway – might alienate prospective Christians. “Meet them at the their level,” because, after all, doesn’t God say He loves us just as we are? … and pretty soon, the well-meaning Christian is the enabler of sin and a rebellious lifestyle, instead of speaking the truth.

If someone were to approach you on the street, and say, “Sic enim dilexit Deus mundum ut Filium suum unigenitum daret ut omnis qui credit in eum non pereat sed habeat vitam aeternam,” chance are you would not know what the person said. I wouldn’t. How about if someone in the supermarket called to you, “Denn so hat Gott die Welt geliebt, daß er seinen eingeborenen Sohn gab, damit jeder, der an ihn glaubt, nicht verloren gehe, sondern ewiges Leben habe!” it probably would not be much different. Are they asking a question, telling a joke, or cursing at you? Then you get a phone call: “Car Dieu a tant aimé le monde qu’il a donné son Fils unique, afin que quiconque croit en lui ne périsse point, mais qu’il ait la vie éternelle.”

Well, these are the Latin, German, and French translations of John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.” If you went to Sunday School, if you watch football games on TV, you know the verse. Do you know it in Latin?

It makes no difference whether you understand it or not: it is still true.

And this is a lesson for how you and I should relate to non-believers. Some Christian counselors dismiss bad behavior, for fear of offending those who need help. Some youth workers try to dress and talk and act like adolescents, subconsciously (or maybe quite deliberately) thinking that they have found a way to reach kids that is better than sharing God’s truth. No: we should speak the truth, and the Holy Spirit takes over when the seed is planted – part of the job description.

Most of us live on smaller stages, but we should remember that when St Paul explained that he was willing to be “all things to all people,” he didn’t mean compromising his faith; he meant that, unlike haughty priests, he knew it was necessary to meet everyone where they were, literally. He “spoke Greek to Greeks,” and showed up in front of pagan temples – not to join in their rituals but to share Jesus with people who would never otherwise hear such words.

Likewise, Jesus Himself. He had fellowship with Mary Magdalene, and the woman at the well, not to have sex but to discuss their sins. Not even to condemn, but to forgive. But He did not “accept” them “where they were” in terms of accepting their transgressions. Just the opposite. Jesus was, and is, quick and hard with the Truth. “Sin no more.”

If we do less – whether confronting our own sins; or the sometimes excruciating obligation to share the gospel with others; or in confronting integrity in national debates – if we do less, we fail not by slight degrees, but miserably.

For then we brand ourselves as “half-truthers,” which is tradition’s polite term for liars. All things to all people? Unless you define it as Paul did… far better it is to be one thing to the One God. If truth be told.

+ + +

Truth does not vary according to the audience or the culture or the times. That is the definition of truth. Like a rock. Not just as a last refuge but a first affection, we should cling to the Rock of Ages. Here some Homecoming singers at the Cove, Billy Graham’s conference center, gathered to sing the classic hymn. Sitting next to Gloria Gaither that day, under a portrait of Billy Graham, was Billy’s late wife Ruth.

Click: All Things To All People

11-14-11

Lunatics are running the asylum. Having been in the humor business most of my life, I feel like it is becoming difficult to be more outrageous than reality. Last week I had an accident when I sneezed while driving. After the police showed up and made their report, I was charged with Driving Under the Influenza. No, not really, but things have almost gotten that absurd.

On the serious side, we see the economies of the world crumbling before our eyes. The distress of mighty nations and powerful leaders affects each of us in the smallest compartments of our lives… and it will get worse. The Penn State scandal, a cancerous obscenity at every level we know of (and probably more details to follow) is, sadly, an age-old story of personal sin, and of moral cowardice on the part of others who might have intervened. Yet the twist of contemporary American culture is thousands of students rioting because their idol of a coach – a false idol, clearly, as guilty as clergymen who cover up for fellow pedophiles – is reprimanded for complicity in molestation. “Building men” on the field, and letting boys be destroyed in the locker room.

Elsewhere in the news, the “Occupy” movement, to me, is partly humorous and partly troubling. Add partly offensive. Which adds up to totally dangerous. I feel like a latter-day Rip Van Winkle – where have these unwashed, hirsute, malodorous hordes been until two months ago? Are they some new species, a “42-year locust”? The Sixties are repeating on us, like a side dish of rancid sauerkraut.

Less amusing (?) is the lack of discourse in what purports to be a protest movement. Beating drums, robot-like chanting, three murders, rapes, vandalism, defecation on sidewalks and on police car hoods, public intercourse, intimidation of pedestrians… these are not traditional seeds of economic reform. But these are new times. Maybe end times.

Then there is the dangerous aspect, that the cultural establishment and a portion of the political elite regard these folks as modern Washingtons. They aren’t Washing-anythings. But the Occupy movement might well become the tail that wags the dog of political debate in this country. And just as financial thievery in exalted boardrooms can affect our own kitchen pantries… so can lice-infested rabble in city parks affect mighty governments and their agencies. It surely is possible.

I have a friend who equates a proposal to eliminate food stamps as a willingness to watch millions of Americans starve to death. Hyperbole masquerades as propositional truth every day these days. But in a democratic republic, Theodore Roosevelt reminded us, the sin of envy is as evil as the sin of greed. And when Christ adjured us to “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” he did NOT want believers to surrender to the government our charitable impulses nor our responsibility personally to care for the sick and needy.

On television we see street riots in Oakland, in Rome, in Greece… and we are reminded that “democracy,” a word with Greek roots, was to be avoided, as a step preceding mob rule.

Occupy Wall Street. Occupy banks. Occupy cities. Occupy parliaments. Let us, as Christians, as we are concerned with justice, and work as representatives of Jesus in this world, remember at the same time to be concerned with the ultimate activism – that we Occupy Heaven.

Instead of changing people’s hearts, many well-meaning churchgoers – and a lot of ill-intentioned political thugs – would rather pick people’s pockets. Of course, the hearts we should most be concerned with changing are our own. We can miss Heaven by scheming for worldly solutions to spiritual problems. But by holding high the Cross, in our hearts as well as in society, we can storm Heaven’s gates, some day as redeemed and sanctified children of God, to Occupy Heaven.

+ + +

It is the desire of God’s heart that we Occupy Heaven. For those who accept Christ, there are no “off-limits signs,” or “No Trespassing” rules. There is not only a way to Heaven, but a Highway to Heaven. Here is the rousing gospel song, exciting a staid British audience, by Jessy Dixon.

Click: The Highway to Heaven

9-19-11

My granddaughter Elsie was dedicated this weekend. Since I was not able to attend – partly because she is in Northern Ireland and I am not – Emily and Norman did the next best thing these days: hooked up a Skype connection. The ceremony “streamed live,” and when I was asked to pray, a microphone was held to my spectral, flickering image. I am not sure the people in the church could hear (in fact I heard only every fifth word or so of theirs), but we all know that God did. I got to wondering: would the 120 have gathered in the Upper Room if there had been Skype 2000 years ago?

The screen has become a part of our lives now. Tekkies tell us that, soon, smart-phone screens will substitute for computer screens, and soon will projected onto walls, even to handle touch-screen capabilities once projected. (In the meantime, of course, it took me 20 minutes to remember how to charge the laptop’s batteries…)

In recent history, much of my supposed field, popular culture, essentially has been related to the small screen. Even our political history. Richard Nixon might have been kicked off Dwight Eisenhower’s presidential ticket in 1952, but for the “Checkers Speech” he made on TV (decades later my mother still grew misty-eyed, recalling that piece of political theater). Eight years later, radio listeners to the Nixon-Kennedy debates rated Nixon the winner; but on TV he came across as sweaty, shifty-eyed, and dark (here merely was ill, warm, and had a five-o’clock shadow)… and such was the power of TV that Kennedy narrowly won that election. It has always been my opinion that much of the American public and even a lot of Ronald Reagan’s supporters viewed him as an overly amiable “aw, shucks” guy, until one night in the 1980 primaries, a moderator tried to shut off Reagan’s microphone in a hall he had rented. The Gipper angrily shouted, “I’m PAYING for this microphone, Mr Breen!” Even Reagan’s political rivals broke out in applause; and I remember thinking, “THAT’s how he’ll face down the Soviets.” I think America saw him differently too, because of a TV moment.

Last week a similar moment happened. I doubt whether history will turn on the exchange… but for one moment the crux of the Great Debate of the 20th century, and the American government’s fate in the 21st, was in the headlights. Then things moved on, maybe never to be raised again. It was a moment in the Republican debate when moderator Wolf Blitzer asked a hypothetical health-care question of the only doctor on stage, Ron Paul. If a healthy man who chose not to buy insurance got very sick, “are you saying that society should just let him die?”

I am not making a brief for a candidate, believe me: The response was mechanistic, not theological. However, Rep. Paul spoke some common sense when he recalled that he began his medical practice before the days of Medicare and Medicaid. He never turned a patient away, and never knew a hospital to do so. “What about family, friends, and churches?” he asked rhetorically. Is that a heartless attitude… or is it biblical?

Statistics indicate that Americans bestow more charity than do citizens of most other nations; that Christians donate more than people of other faiths; that conservatives are far more generous than liberals, along these lines. This is instructive, especially in the face of concerted campaigns to the contrary. That is, there are serious political efforts to end tax deductions for charitable contributions, and since the New Deal, we are confronted with philosophies that attempt to have government substitute for private charity.

The dilemma is not, of course, whether to render assistance. It is co-opting the impulse behind it, making war on our freedoms of conscience and action. When government “takes care of the poor,” we don’t have to, is the general proposition: that is the mindset of the modern state. Whether the poor, or sick, or homeless, are measurably assisted, is actually an open question (poverty rates have changed little since the Great Society) – but many people’s consciences are deadened “because the government will take care of the needy.” And this is apart from the question of whether it is moral to coerce one person here to support the children of another person there; or a woman from, say, Arizona to have to pay for the surgery of a man from, say, Maine. Eventually, citizens will be unable on their own to assist folks when they hear about children needing assistance, or surgical procedures requiring help. Already 1.75 citizens supports one Social Security beneficiary, and then we start adding Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, disaster relief, foreign aid…

Years ago I was impressed, when reading St Augustine’s Confessions, how he regarded charity. He quoted Christ’s words, “the poor ye shall always have with you,” and explained this otherwise enigmatic verse. Augustine identified with the poor, in part because Christ did, and he was extraordinarily active on their behalf. Augustine had a vision of corrupt man as someone who, despite our best intentions, keeps returning to self. He warned in the same vein against a circular form of love where even acts of charity were futile if divorced from the love and will of God.

“Anonymous” charity – that is, actions devoid of love; empty – is self-absorbing at best, and an offense to God at worst. For Augustine came to realize, through the humility to which the Cross inevitably brings us, that an act of charity (that word is also translated as “love”) is a godly construct. The poor, who we will always have with us, inspire us to imitate Christ in their care… and that pleases God.

That the humility, even the shame, of the Cross, takes us (drags us?) to more of an outwardly focused life, is the essence of the fulfilled believer’s life on earth. We evolve from awareness to compassion to identification to brokenness with the hurting, needy, and dependent. Which is, of course, our state too. Even when we are in Christ – I say, even MORE so, when we are in Christ – we must practice sacrificial love, tender mercy, and authentic assistance.

“That TV moment” I mentioned above is when political types, and TV watchers, had a chance to think about the drift – more like a tsunami – of the past several generations. It is mighty hard to maintain the impulse of individual response, when the “world system” keeps saying it is not our job, but theirs. St Augustine seemed to be looking 1600 years into the future when he wrote, “Woe to the soul which supposes it will find something better if it forsakes You!”

+ + +

Casting Crowns and the Beanscot Channel combine for a simple but powerful lesson drawn from true “Christian Charity” – with Christ in our hearts we trust Him more; and with Christ in our hearts we do His will more willingly.

Click: It’s So Sweet To Trust in Jesus

(Last week’s music was from an ancient opera, Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell, which prompted a few questions about a “pagan” theme. First, I offered it with a Christian application, but [“full circle”] St Augustine himself is thought to have patterned the structure, not the contents, of his Confessions after The Aeneid. And Virgil, of course, patterned his epic after Homer’s Odyssey. And my point was that the nation of America, like the character Dido, is appropriate for a Lament to be sung.)

Fifty years ago, on July 9, 1961, Whittaker Chambers died. His life had a profound impact on my life, and this was because, during Chambers’ career of brilliant achievement and sordid intrigue, God came to have a profound impact on his life. Along the way, Whittaker Chambers affected American life at two times, in two ways, not just in profound ways, but with profound implications.

Forty years ago, on the 10th anniversary of his death, I was a student at American University in Washington DC. I was active, locally and in the nearby national headquarters, in Young Americans for Freedom, the conservative campus youth group founded by William F Buckley. A small confraternity in DC that called itself the Whittaker Chambers Society wanted to meet in commemoration of their friend, and they contacted our chapter to see if we could provide a room at AU. It was not a large group, loosely organized but tightly knit, and this anniversary meeting bid to overflow a living room.

There were few in the group whom I recognized – the legendary writer Ralph deToledano chaired the evening, which largely consisted of reminiscences – however I knew that I was in presence of battle-scarred veterans and authentic heroes, each with a poignant story. And there was a ghostly echelon in attendance as well. The great battle of the 20th century, between Communism and freedom, still raged. In this room were former Communists, once so dedicated they were willing to die for the cause… and bring down America in the process. Also in the room – in fact, virtually the same people – were folks who knew what freedom was; what it cost; what it is worth; and that it, too, demands a willingness to die in its cause. They had all lived through what Arthur Koestler called “Darkness at Noon” in the erstwhile belief that Communism was mankind’s salvation.

Chambers was merely the most prominent of many similar intellectual warriors, a representative of types. His father Jay was a cartoonist and illustrator, drawing for the children’s magazine St Nicholas (I see innocent line-drawings in my collection of that magazine). Whittaker’s parents divorced; his grandmother went insane; his brother committed suicide. The troubled youth entered Columbia University, where he wrote a campus play of a blasphemous nature that was controversial beyond Morningside Heights, throughout New York City. He wrote essays and poetry that caught the eye of his instructor Mark Van Doren, and of fellow students Louis Zukofsky, Lionel Trilling, Clifton Fadiman, and Meyer Schapiro, all destined to be distinguished in the arts.

Chambers was attracted to radicalism; he became a Communist and, among his jobs, he served as editor of The New Masses. (The magazine’s cartoonist Jacob Burck, another eventual renegade from Stalinism, in later years told me stories of Chambers sleeping in his Union Square studio.) Behind the brutal polemicist and radical advocate, however, was, always, the sensitive artist. Chambers translated the gentle children’s classic Bambi into English – a tender masterpiece in itself.

During the 1920s he drifted further toward radicalism and radical associates, including Soviet spies. He was recruited to be a courier for Soviet spy rings in Washington. Many secret Communists held middle- and upper-level positions in the administration of Franklin Roosevelt. Chambers’ job was to protect false identities but coordinate the collection of government documents and deliver them to “handlers” in New York. These government officials were also “in place” to influence American policy during the New Deal and the War. Among the social (and Communist Party) friends of Chambers and his new wife Esther Shemitz was Alger Hiss, State Department official, and his wife Priscilla.

Gradually, despite the glamour of espionage, but also because of the danger of espionage, Chambers’ love affair with Communism waned. Additional factors included an introspective contemplation – stirrings of a spiritual awakening – of the miracle of his newborn baby’s ear; the Hitler-Stalin Pact; and the brutality of fellow operatives being murdered by Moscow for ideological “impurities.” Finally, instead of passing along all stolen documents, Chambers kept some that implicated spies, and hid them away as insurance so the Party would not harm him or his family. He blended back into society.

Chambers bought a farm in rural Maryland. He and his wife became Quakers (though not pacifists), and he lived close to the soil. But his talent could not be sublimated; his soaring intellect, far-ranging sympathies, and sensitive prose brought him to the attention of TIME Magazine’s publisher Henry Luce. Chambers eventually became a reviewer, staff writer, and editor. For TIME and LIFE he wrote cover stories and essays that were widely admired. He tempted fate as a former member of the Communist underground who “went public,” but that very fact became a sort of insulation too. In the 1940s he privately warned the Administration of the spy network permeating the New Deal, but FDR himself dismissed the information, and disciplined nobody, removed nobody.

After World War II, it became another matter. America’s former Soviet “ally” openly challenged the US across the globe; former “plants” in the government were rising to positions of prominence. Alger Hiss, in fact, was a visible and celebrated architect of the United Nations. Additionally, other former Communist spies and couriers, starting with Elizabeth Bentley, were “speaking.”

The next several years were the stuff of high drama, if not legend. Congressional committees called an array of former spies, accused spies, and “fellow travelers” who variously exposed or protected friends. Politicians like a young Richard Nixon established their careers (in Nixon’s case, on Chambers’ coattails); a young Joe McCarthy fueled his own, shorter, career spurt. The statute of limitations had expired on Hiss’s espionage, but he sued Chambers for libel. In two spectacular trials, a combination of Chambers’ memory, a telltale typewriter used to copy the stolen documents, and Alger Hiss’s self-incriminating slips, resulted in a perjury conviction that sent Hiss to prison for five years.

The Left has always made a cause of Hiss (“he was framed”; “he was persecuted as a progressive”) but documents released after the collapse of the Soviet Union uniformly confirmed the accounts of Chambers and other ex-Communists, the guilt of many embedded espionage agents, and the shame of politicians and journalists who covered for them. Similar to the Establishment’s canonization of Hiss despite the evidence against him, the same Establishment villified Chambers… and still does. It is a gross injustice. It is hardly the Left’s only blacklisting campaign.

In 1952 Whittaker Chambers was formally vindicated but impoverished by all of his legal bills. He wrote a book, Witness, that became a best-seller and placed the excellent publishing house Regnery on the map. It is one of the great autobiographies in American letters. As a political document, it traces Chambers’ life through anguish to righteous indignation over social injustice, to enlistment in the Communist cause that initially was idealistic. It sparkles with intrigue but spares none of the grunge of underground life. He describes the role of minor bureaucrats and no-name couriers in momentous international events. Fascinating.

But we are here to discuss the spiritual side of Whittaker Chambers, and Witness, as well. The book affected me deeply as a youngster: the confessions, the sensitivity, the simultaneous idealism and pessimism, the amazing literary style. What a writer! I was not alone, of course – this man, and his anguished journey including recantations and painful betrayals, changed the political creed of no less a reader than Ronald Reagan, former New Deal liberal.

Implicit in the second half of the Chambers story – after he literally was born again – is one of the greatest faith stories of the age. In characteristically brilliant fashion, he does not grab readers by the lapels to convince them of the Reality of God: he assumes it, he lives it; witnesses to it. That is enough. Not merely an adequate presentation of the role of faith, but supremely sufficient. After his autobiography was published, Chambers served briefly with National Review magazine, and, forever controversial despite his retiring nature, he died suddenly, 50 years ago.

Of the people who gathered at American University 40 years ago, as I looked across that room, most had known Whittaker Chambers. It was a privilege I missed, but it is special enough to know him from his work and his words; to have been inspired, and to try to live a life of faith and fidelity — and a larger patriotism than most people exercise — that he charted.

He was not a Republican: he knew both parties were complicit in treason, and always capable of it. He was not a conservative: he called himself a “man of the right.” He was not even an optimist: he believed that Communism (and the collectivist mentality) would barrel ahead, and that he, Chambers, was actually switching to the “losing side” of history. Of course he was speaking of worldly events, not the biblical perspective. History is not exactly contradicting him.

Having spoken of his eloquence, and his faith, I can do no better, on this anniversary of his passing, to finish with some quotations. America would do well to learn from them, still; Christians would do well to study them; and I wish everybody I knew would find a copy of Witness and read it.

Human societies, like human beings, live by faith and die when faith dies.

I see in Communism the focus of the concentrated evil of our time.

+++

Finally, excerpts from a cover story Chambers wrote for TIME magazine (can you imagine TIME running such words today???), the first Christmas after World War II ended:

Peace and homecoming, peace and homecoming rang like the clangor of Christmas bells in the heart of nearly every American last week….

Be still, and know that I am God.

+++

Fitting to this day, it seems, is the brief Funeral March by Henry Purcell:

Click: Whittaker Chambers, rest in peace.

7-4-11

Happy birthday, America. Let us commemorate July 4, the date joined in our collective consciousness with the names boldly affixed to that glorious document, the Declaration; July 4, the phrase that is synonymous with “independence” by asking “WWJD”?

And by this we mean, just for today… What Would Jefferson Do?

Would he recognize the America that he helped birth? Do you think any of the Framers might think twice about having pledged their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor? Would Founding Fathers endorse, or despise, the changes wrought in the Federal system over the years since they dared to dream, risked the safety of their homes and families, and sacrificed in countless ways for the sake of generations yet unborn?

Benjamin Franklin told an inquirer outside Independence Hall that he and his colleagues had fashioned “a Republic, Madam, if you can keep it.” Have we kept it?

Is the traditional American Fourth of July frozen in time… frozen in amber? Is it a fossil?

Many portions of the American colonies were settled to spread the Gospel; were dedicated by prayer after prayer and flag after planted flag to the cause of Christ; and were modeled on Biblical principles top to bottom. Despite many religious differences, and, of course, many secular points of view, these outposts and colonies became the American Nation.

A “nation” is different than a “country.” Like the German word “volk,” it includes the inchoate concepts of shared precepts, common goals, and assumed rights… and responsibilities. People can move to China, and they will thereafter be Americans living in China. You can obtain a visa in, say, Nigeria, and will be known as an American with Nigerian papers. Choose to live in Finland, and you will be called a Finnish citizen from America, but not a Finn. However, anyone, from anywhere in the world, comes to the United States… and that person becomes an American.

Once that title meant more than now. Even those who defend the invasion by illegal immigrants often justify it by “people want a better life” – that is, material terms. If the British, back in 1776, had proposed onerous travel restrictions; monitored what was taught in schoolrooms, churches, and town meetings; arbitrarily imposed heavy taxes… the Colonists would have rebelled.

Oh, wait. Those things did happen, and there was rebellion. And, come to think of it, those things are happening today. And there is no rebellion.

One of the forgotten inspirations of Jefferson and his compatriots was Algernon Sidney, an Englishman of the 1600s. Neither John Locke (whose Treatises on Civil Government enjoyed greater repute through the years) nor Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government, would have been written if not for the furor surrounding Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha (1679), which argued for the Divine Right of Kings. Locke and Sidney wrote persuasive and passionate defenses of individual, God-given liberty… for which they were persecuted. Locke fled to Holland, perhaps insuring his ultimate influence. Sidney was arrested and beheaded, perhaps insuring a claim on our attentions as a man willing to die for ideas.

Sidney wrote in Discourses Concerning Government (Sect. II, Par 13), “All human constitutions are subject to corruption and must perish unless they are timely renewed and reduced to their first principles.” What a concept. WWJD? Thomas Jefferson agreed: he copied this sentence prominently into his Commonplace Book.

Jefferson was the author of the cornerstone phrase, “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” In his day the radical aspect to this was not that he acknowledged a Creator God, but that rights were the basic birthright of Americans. Today, Jefferson’s descendents prattle about “rights” and “fairness” and entitlements but consider a mere mention of a Creator to be radical… or — just wait, you see it coming already — a criminal act. Happy birthday, America.

Here’s another quotation of Thomas Jefferson, inheritor of the ideals of Christian Patriots like Locke and Sidney, and prime author of the precious documents we commemorate (or should) this weekend:

“God forbid we should ever be 20 years without… rebellion…. What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that [Americans] preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms…. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural [fertilizer]” (Letter to William S. Smith, Nov. 13, 1787. See Jefferson On Democracy, Saul Padover, ed., 1939, 20).

Therefore, please, note that it is not we who rain on the birthday party. The shades of Locke and Sidney; of Jefferson, Franklin, and Washington; of Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt; and of — perhaps more important than any of these supernal names — the countless and nameless Christian Patriots and pioneers and mothers and fathers and soldiers and sailors who insured the safety and prosperity we enjoy for at least the moment. Would THEY attend America’s birthday party?

Or would they send their regrets?

+

Here is a song, on this theme, by the greatest American folk poet of our generation, Merle Haggard. “Are the good times really over for good?”

Click: Are the Good Times Really Over for Good?

6-20-11

Theodore Roosevelt, about whom I currently am writing a biography, began his own autobiography – the story of a crowded life and successful careers – with the sentence “My father was the best man I ever knew.”

Surely, no man could desire a better epitaph. Such an assessment by one’s children is worth more to one’s soul than material success or inventories of accumulations. Even the plaudits of peers or hoped-for “posterity” are fickle and, in the end, worthless. Fathers who have earned the loving respect of children do not need such things; and without the sincere regard of one’s children, other things seem meaningless.

These are universal truths. It matters little whether you meditate on them from the perspective of being a father or being a son or daughter; whether your father has passed on or is still with you. I believe I can say without fear of contradiction that if you are reading this, you have a father. And let’s say that you cannot quite quote Theodore Roosevelt about your own dad, think for a second about words attributed to Mark Twain: “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to be around him. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

There is, in the Bible, a concept called the “Scarlet Thread of Redemption,” where the person, and the work, of Christ, is seen in countless prophecies, references, allusions, allegories, types, numerologies, before His coming, apart from His immediate incarnation. So it is – or should be – with our families, and our fathers. We cannot be free of examples and influences, words and advice. We cannot even escape what every generation of human history but our own has believed in: bloodlines, tendencies, inherited talents. “We are our fathers’ children” is meant to convey the inevitable patrimonies we inherit.

In the rare and sorry cases where fathers are not the role models we wish for – like some Dickens characters – it is still wise for us to learn and know about our families’ pasts. For correction, for reproach, as curatives. In my own case, I can state a variation on TR’s tribute: my own father was the best friend I ever had. Every project I do, I wonder how he would like it; every week, I start to reach for the phone to share something he would find interesting. But he has been gone for more than a dozen years.

But this is not about my father, or me as a father; or your father; or – stick with me – even on Father’s Day, any mortal fathers. God did not put any qualifiers on the Commandment. “Honor your father and your mother.” Nothing about “if” this or that; or “after” they have proven themselves. Think of another famous Father in the Bible – remember when God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac: a father should sacrifice his son??? God intervened, of course, when Abraham showed his obedience, and then our minds rush forward – along the Golden Thread of Fatherhood – and realize that we had a picture of our Heavenly Father willing to sacrifice for the sake of history’s children, all of us, uncountable numbers except to Him, “for He so loved the world.”

As good a man, as good a friend, as we have in this world; or try ourselves to be, or ever hope to be, is nothing compared to the love of Father God. In this regard, every day of the year should be FATHER’S Day. And at the end of our days, if our children can say (doubly paraphrasing), “Well done, good and faithful father,” then we are blessed indeed.

+

I have chosen a memorable and beautiful song, “Going Home,” to illustrate this message. It has been a Negro spiritual, hymn, and folk song; its tune is taken from, of all things, Antonin Dvorak’s 9th Symphony (which, in turn, had relied on American folk melodies). Clearly, it sings of death… but in the context of that precious tradition I spoke of, of family-generations not being separate things, but close parts. One day we shall not only share eternal life, but be reunited with mother and father who, the song says, “are waiting there; expecting us.” The performance is by the astonishingly impressive London boys’ choir called Libera. This will move you.

Click: Going Home

6-13-11

The most holy days of the Christian calendar might not be Christmas and Easter, greeting cards and family get-togethers to the contrary notwithstanding. I have no intention of diminishing their importance, of course, and we should agree that every day “is the day that the Lord has made; let us be glad and rejoice” in them all. The meanings of Christmas and Easter are foundation-stones of our faith.

However, the two Sundays celebrated in this very church season, back to back, traditionally were major observance-days in church history, most of 2000 years. And they are much neglected today.

I am referring to Ascension Day and Pentecost. Christmas reminds us that God sent his Son; on Easter we celebrate that His Son, who Died in our place for the sin-punishment we deserve, was raised from the dead, as He had raised Lazarus. Although Jesus said “It is finished” before He died on the cross, His earthly ministry was really completed when He ascended into Heaven. He went to sit at the right hand of the Father; His divinity was asserted. Then He became Lord as well as Savior.

Then, in just a few days, there was a gathering in an upper room in Jerusalem.

When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance….

Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” … Then those who gladly received his word were baptized; and that day about three thousand souls were added to them. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers. Then fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. … And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.

Pentecost is the birthday of the church. It was from this day, and that event, that the church was commissioned to be God’s home – or, more correctly, be Him, to a lost world. Like a proper birthday party, there were gifts galore, as the excerpt from Acts II describes. Not the least of miracles is that Peter was transformed from a wise guy to a wise man. That’s the kind of thing that happens when the Holy Spirit blows in, and settles in your heart.

I would like to share what I think the church is going to start looking like, but that’s for later. Right now I’m enjoying the birthday party.

+

A great birthday tune: a traditional hymn performed in a non-traditional way (and this traditional guy loves it) by Bart Millard, backed by Mercy Me. Visuals by the traditionally awesome Beanscot Channel.

Click: Brethren, We Have Met to Worship

6-6-11

In the time we have been doing these weekly messages, I occasionally have referred to the fact that I was in the process of writing a biography of Johann Sebastian Bach – the “Christian Encounters” of history’s greatest music-maker.

Several people have written, asking What ever happened to that book I was working on? Actually, it was published last month by Thomas Nelson Publishers.

This week I will pass along a couple excerpts from the new book, Johann Sebastian Bach. I pray they have relevance to you in the week ahead. We can take away profound lessons from this man, who was an example of someone graced with talent, yet totally humble in desiring to turn those gifts back to God. Artists should “express themselves” and “be transparent” so their audiences can know “where they are coming from”? Such motivations were unknown, or repugnant, to men and women of Bach’s time. Their efforts – indeed their privilege – was to serve the Savior. That was fulfillment.

Bach began virtually every composition, even his secular music, with a blank paper on which he wrote, Jesu, juva (“Jesus, help me”) on the upper left corner of the first page, and Soli Deo Gloria (“To God alone the glory”) on the bottom right corner of the finished ending. His was a personal relationship, not a professional duty, with the Savior.

Such “bookends” were as anointing oil over all of Bach’s creative work. So did he begin and end his days – and his life – with such petition and praise: “Jesus, help me” and “To God alone be all the glory.” With or without the mode of music, such dedication speaks to us through the years of Bach’s relevance today.

+ + +

Not every believer has had a Road-To-Damascus moment like St Paul’s, nor a terror-filled lightning storm in the Thuringian forest (where Luther vowed to study for the priesthood), nor directly contended with Satan (as Luther, in the famous legend, threw an inkwell while translating the Bible in the Wartburg Castle, Eisenach).

Sebastian Bach modestly was born into the Lutheran faith, died a committed Lutheran communicant, and, by all evidence, never experienced any spiritual doubts or crises of faith. His employers were largely ecclesiastical, and his few “secular” (court music) postings always included Christian music in their assignments. Fully half of the music he wrote was Christian. He managed musical staffs at his churches, and he taught Christian education. He was not an ordained pastor, yet the degree of his daily study, and the examinations he was obliged to pass, proved him the peer of clergy. He was indeed one of the most equipped and effective “preachers” of his age. He has been called “The Fifth Evangelist.”

Humble about his gifts, and determined that all his music was unto the Lord, we can see, as he surely did, that the “secular” Orchestral Suites and the Brandenburg Concertos and the Musical Offering and the Goldberg Variations and the suites for harpsichord and ‘cello and violin and flute – and the toccatas and trios and passacaglias and fantasias and fugues – were all spiritual compositions. Just without words.

Is this not the perfect blueprint for any Christian? Willing to forsake worldly acclaim, this modest servant of his Savior thanked God for the talents with which he was mightily blessed… and used them for the propagation of the Gospel, the souls of his fellow man, and the glory of God.

The glory of God alone.

+

Any piece of Bach’s music, Christian or “secular,” could give us a spiritual boost to start the week. I have chosen for you a beautiful transcription of his famous “Air on the G string” from his third Orchestral Suite. Brief, supernal, played touchingly by the electric violinist Vanessa-Mae. The videos are pictures, somehow appropriate, of God’s other corners of Creation (for Bach was a force of nature, one of the crowns of God’s creation, surely), taken from the Hubbell Space Telescope.

Click: An Ancient Model Speaks to Our Future

5-30-11

Hey, Soldier. Or Sailor, Airman, Marine. Late servicemen, fallen or passed on.

It’s Memorial Day. Your day.

Back when all the holidays meant something – and meant something different – this began as “Decoration Day.” When people decorated military graves, or commemorative statues, or monuments and plaques.

That’s why I’m addressing you as one group, and anonymously, because Decoration Day was designed to memorialize, to remember and honor, dead servicemen and women. All of you. You know, on the Fourth of July we celebrate our independence; on Veterans’ Day we honor the retired military among us.

That’s the way it was supposed to be. Decoration Day was changed to Memorial Day, maybe because the act of placing flowers and flags was becoming an empty gesture. Or simply wasn’t being done that much anymore. Whatever: most Americans think of it now as “the beginning of summer,” the vacation season. So, backyard barbecues have replaced parades and cemetery services.

Maybe that’s what you fought for, and many of you died for. “The American Way of Life.” My dad didn’t fight in World War II because he hated the Nazis or Japs like the government told him to; he didn’t even believe that Main Streets in the American heartland were about to be invaded. He volunteered and served because it was his duty. That’s another old-fashioned concept.

The dirty little secret about history is that the best fighting forces have met success not because they hated, but because they loved. You American Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines, in your graves through the land – throughout the world, sometimes buried where you fell – loved the flag, loved your people, your homes, your Main Streets; and you loved the concepts of duty and honor.

Most of you guys are probably like my father, and would tell me that you just “did what you had to do,” and most of your kids are probably like me, in awe of dedication and sacrifice. You would tell us to honor the people in uniform right now, and we do.

I am aching to ask you questions, if I could: is it different now? Today we fight enemies so far from our shores, toward a victory that has not been defined. So often fulfilling missions to build roads and schools and deliver classroom computers, when back home here, where many military spouses are on food stamps, there are American communities in need of roads and schools and classroom computers.

I know one thing that’s not different, because I have met some of the returning service people today, and have seen them on TV too. The uniforms still grace good people; people who have a sense of honor and duty; brave people who serve because service is honorable.

So maybe if anything is different now, it’s not the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines; and maybe, when all is said and done, it’s not so much the service they are asked to perform. Maybe the biggest difference is what kind of America they have been fighting for, what Main Streets they return to. I pray they are not much different than those of your day.

… but it was you men and women, now in your graves and represented in those memorials, who brought us to the point where we can even discuss these questions. You didn’t give us Freedom – God did that – but you all defended it. You knew the difference, and you did it well. Often it was brutally difficult, and usually it was far, far away from your homes.

So I’m going to tell you about trips we will take, many of us, this Memorial Day. Not as far away as your places of service and sacrifice. Some of us are not close to our relatives’ military graves, but all of us are close to some military grave or memorial. I am going to suggest that we, the living, pick some flowers or buy some flowers, or get a little flag, and visit a military cemetery. Or any cemetery, and then look for a military emblem on the stone. Or a town’s war memorial. We are going to place a “decoration,” maybe a thank-you letter or a prayer, to brighten your memory and honor you… whoever you are. We are going to pray thanksgiving for your service. For those of us who cannot get out, we are going to make that trip in our minds.

I look forward to visiting the grave of a stranger. I will symbolically shake your hand, and salute you. You represent much that was great about America. You represented us. God bless you.

+

Many songs – patriotic, traditional, military – could follow this message. I have chosen this old Johnny Cash recitation that decorates the memories of our late military members with the colors red, white, and blue.

Click: That Ragged Old Flag

5-2-11

Since nothing about David Wilkerson’s life was normal (like the rest of us would mean “conventional” or “predictable”) it probably is appropriate that his death was not normal either. Enough people die every week from highway collisions with big tractor trailers, but this man spent years going into into drug hangouts and gang hideouts, and preached on street corners of violent neighborhoods, and had bodyguards as he established urban churches, and never was harmed. A car crash in rural Texas seems an ironic way to die.

David was shy of his 80th birthday when he was killed on April 27. It is possible that some Americans, even some Christians, have forgotten his name. If that is true, it is not just: his works have been branded on the American culture, all for the good. He was a founder of Teen Challenge, the youth counseling and substance-abuse recovery program that has an 80 per cent success rate versus scratch in secular programs. There are now almost 1200 Teen Challenge centers around the world. He wrote the book The Cross and the Switchblade, about his inner-city ministry among gangs. It was a best-seller, and the movie starring Pat Boone and Eric Estrada has gone on to be one of the most-watched motion pictures of all time. Nicky Cruz, the former gang leader at the center of the book, has established his own far-flung ministry, as have countless other people touched by David.

Not everyone, of course, whose lives were transformed through David’s service are Christian celebrities today. Most of them merely live cleaned-up, straightened-out, redeemed, and productive lives, if you can use the word “merely” about momentous changes in the lives of drunks, drug addicts, prostitutes, and everyday sinners like us all. David was a founder of Times Square Church, right in the center of Manhattan and “at the crossroads of the world.” And Times Square Church, with the Salvation Army, has hosted “Prayer in the Square” events –- 15,000+ people gathering annually in Times Square to sing, praise Jesus, and pray for city, nation, and world.

A remarkable life. I did not know David Wilkerson, but have a couple connections that led me to realize a spiritual lesson when I heard of his death. I once edited the autobiography of the widow of Hobart Grazier, professor and early leader of Valley Forge Christian College. She was the mother of a friend, and I was amused that the amateur writer’s manuscript made big deals of minor events, and treated more interesting matters casually. Like when Grazier, a Pennsylvania minister, took his family to Springfield MO, to his denomination’s headquarters. At the last minute a young local guy asked to ride along; after the trip he became involved in ministry. I read the passage, which contained no other information about the fellow other than his name, and I asked my friend, “Bev, is your mom writing about THAT David Wilkerson?”

She was. Now, God would have led David in some way, somehow, some time, to ministry, I suppose; but I was reminded of the verse in Ecclesiastes: “Time and chance happeneth to them all.” The New Living Translation has it: “It is all decided by chance, by being in the right place at the right time.”

A couple years later, my son and I attended a technology show in New York with a couple of friends and their sons on a Sunday afternoon. With the morning free, we wanted to worship at Times Square Church. Despite the fact that it is housed in a cavernous, elegant old Broadway theater (the former Mark Hellinger Theatre), it was filled to capacity. We were invited to check out the overflow-rooms with their TV screens. Also SRO, out into the hallways. Imagine -– a Pentecostal church in midtown Manhattan, this crowded. But in a back stairwell, we encountered David Wilkerson, on his way to open the service. One of my friends had never met him, but introduced himself. He was a graduate of Oral Roberts University, and his father, Michael Cardone, had endowed buildings there and at Evangel College in Springfield, the place where David had hitched a ride so many years earlier. In several minutes we had seats -– better than front-row seats, right behind the pulpit, facing the “house.”

I tell this story to remind readers that when you have no juice, choose your friends carefully. No, seriously, it is to explain the vantage-point we had: looking out over thousands of worshipers in the audience and in tier after tier of balconies. The service was as Pentecostal as you might expect at a small Southern church, or in the Upper Room in the Book of Acts. But the astonishing aspect I was privileged to see was the composition of the congregation. Kids in T-shirts and homeless people overdue for baths and shaves -– side-by-side with upscale society women and suburban men in expensive suits. Every age, every color, every accent. Serious in worship, ecstatic in prayer. All as one, as in the Upper Room, or, indeed, as Heaven will be. All under the inspiring preaching of David Wilkerson. “Hard preaching”: none of this “gentle message” to coax people in and afraid to give offense.

Times Square Church began, I think in 2007, to hold “Prayer in the Square” events. A video summary can be clicked on below. A similar video clip has gone viral, showing Muslims on their knees in prayer in uptown Manhattan, e-forwarded with the message that this is a weekly event that clogs traffic. But that, in fact, is an occasional celebration, not regular; with fewer participants -– in other words, the report is exaggerated. But how many of us have seen the annual Wilkerson prayer session in Times Square itself, 15,000-strong? TV, radio, newspapers, internet -– where are you?

This astonishing event is but one of the many, many ministries for which David Wilkerson was responsible. But he was also a prophet of God, an old-fashioned, Old-Testament prophet. Wikipedia lists some of the prophecies David made in his 1973 book The Vision.

Worldwide recession caused by economic confusion:

“An economic recession that’s going to affect the life style of every wage-earner in the world. The world economists are going to be at loss to explain what’s happening. It’s going to start in Europe, spread to Japan and finally to the United States.”

“There will be a move toward a worldwide, unified monetary system. The US dollar will be hit bad and it will take years for it to recover.”

Nature having labor pains:

“There will be major earthquakes… Floods, hurricanes and tornadoes will increase in frequency.”

“A new kind of cosmic storm appearing as a raging fire in the sky leaving a kind of vapor trail.”

A flood of filth and a baptism of dirt in America:

“Topless women will appear on television, followed by full nudity…. Sex and the occult will be mixed.”

“There will be an acceptance of homosexuality, and the church will even say that it is a God-given gift.”

A persecution madness against truly Spirit-filled Christians who love Jesus Christ:

“There will arise a world church consisting of a union between liberal ecumenical Protestants and the Roman Catholic Church, using Christ in name only.”

“There will be a hate-Christ movement.”

“Homosexual and lesbian ministers will be ordained and this will be heralded as a new breed of pioneer.”

“There will be a spiritual awakening behind the Iron and Bamboo Curtains.”

So, the legacy of David Wilkerson is not only countless lives that have been helped, but also countless lives that have been warned.

I titled this message after the parlor-game Six Degrees of Separation (how, with the right friends-of-friends, most of us can know anyone). Mrs Grazier and Mr Cardone gave me near-associations with David Wilkerson. Well, the day I heard about his death, I read a sports column about the New York Mets catcher Mike Nickeas: “He is teammates with Jason Isringhausen, who played with Bobby Bonilla, who played with Carlton Fisk, who played with Carl Yastrzemski, who played with Jackie Jensen, who played with Joe DiMaggio, who played with Lou Gehrig, who was Babe Ruth’s teammate.” Connections.

And I transferred the thought to David Wilkerson. Let’s see: David Wilkerson knew Jesus… And that’s it. He was an obedient servant, a doer of the Word and not a hearer only. He surely had a special anointing, but we all can know Jesus just as intimately. The Holy Spirit makes special endowments, but we may all seek, and receive, spiritual gifts. What do we do with them? That answer -– David Wilkerson’s example -– might be his greatest legacy.

+

Click: David Wilkerson’s “Prayer in the Square”

3-21-11

“Giving something up for Lent” has a sacred origin, of course; and an ancient origin. Sacrifice and self-denial are old Christian traditions, as believers wanted to discipline themselves to identify with Christ’s suffering.

As we noted last week, one reason that God ordained the manner of Jesus’s death – surrender, betrayal, suffering – was to show mankind that the Deity understands the human condition. Holy irony, beautiful synergy. Old observances of the church have changed through the years; for instance, baptisms once were performed only on Easter Sunday. During the Reformation, when there was a desire to push back on sacred rites that had become empty rituals, the long and hard fasts during Lent were changed: individuals made private determinations to sacrifice something precious in order to thank, honor, and “imitate” Christ, for the sake of our souls.

Eventually that became a ritual, or a joke, or a scheme to diet or save lunch money. Not with everyone, of course, but with many people.

This idea is not new with me, but since “giving something up for Lent” is not something from the lips of Jesus, but man-made, no matter how well-intentioned… could we not also thank God, honor Christ, and, yes, “imitate” Him, if we took up something for Lent, instead of laying something aside? That is, something for Him, not for us.

Jesus took up the cross! He allowed Himself to be lifted up in painful crucifixion! He willingly added burdens to Himself in the period before Easter.

Surely we can do the same, and for motives just as pure and God-honoring. Not to gain gold stars, or make a list of good works, or… turn this concept into an empty ritual. But we can all think of adding to our moral to-do list, not temporarily erasing from it, at least for this Lenten season (and beyond!)

The world is hurting… look everywhere. Charities are starving… of staff, not just money. Your neighbor needs a ride… and maybe a word from God. That broken relationship you have somewhere… needs reconciliation. Someone who wronged you… needs forgiveness. We all need forgiveness… so there is a model for us. We received it from the Cross.

“The Old Rugged Cross, so despised by the world, its shame and disgrace we gladly bear…”
+
Click: The Old Rugged Cross

The site of this performance is the neighborhood of Golgotha and the Tomb in Jerusalem. The Gaither Homecoming Friends gathered to modestly sing this dear old hymn. Great scenes, and great meaning, in this short music video…

3-7-11

The assassination this week of Shahbaz Bhatti, the Minister of Minorities in Pakistan, is a story that garnered some attention in the news, but for the most part was subsumed by other reports on related issues from the Islamic world.

Shahbaz was the only Christian in the national cabinet, a brave advocate of religious freedom before world forums and in his own land. The news that crowded his murder from the headlines included other assassinations; street protests; Christians being arrested; Muslim factional hatred; Christians fleeing their homelands; government crackdowns; Christian churches being invaded; piracy, kidnappings and murder; and Christian martyrdom, from lowly believers and pastors to prominent officials in several countries.

According to the BBC, “Mr Bhatti, 42, a leader of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), had just left his mother’s home in a suburb of the capital when several gunmen surrounded his vehicle and riddled it with bullets, say witnesses.” He routinely had been receiving death threats for urging reform of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. “Pamphlets by al-Qaeda and Tehrik-i-Taliban Punjab, a branch of the Taliban in Pakistan’s most populous province, were found at the scene.” Tehrik-i-Taliban told BBC Urdu they carried out the attack.

Four months ago, Shahbaz said in a video, “I want to share that I believe in Jesus Christ who has given His own life for us. I know what is the meaning of [the] cross. And I am following… the cross.” He continued, “I am ready to die for the cross,” speaking these words calmly and with confidence. He knew he was reciting his own epitaph. Shahbaz was not a supernatural prophet – he surely knew the dangers to his life – rather he was a humble servant, an obedient follower.

Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will follow me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross (Matthew 16:24).

Shahbaz correctly pinpointed the center of our world’s coming crisis – not economies nor resources nor pollution; not even religion – but the cross of Jesus Christ. And the persecuted church, in so many of the world’s fiery corners, understands this. Despite the horrible treatment of uncountable Christian martyrs, now approaching one a minute, every day, around the world, that persecuted church is being purified, like gold in a fire.

Some Christians in the West concern themselves with the “Prosperity Gospel,” and debate universalist theories that everyone is going to Heaven, “if there is a Heaven.” But Christ-followers and missionaries and martyrs elsewhere in the world work to “know Christ and make Him known.”

The “crown” is the exclusive focus of too many Christians. Christ promised an abundant life, certainly; but He offered, and warned, and promised, the burden (mysteriously, a glorious burden!) of the “cross.” Plausible Christianity is that the Crown awaits us in Heaven; and the Cross is our lot here.

“It is one thing to kneel at the foot of the cross for forgiveness; it is quite another thing to get on that cross to follow Jesus in His death. But it is the only way to live the resurrected life. This is what it means to be His disciple. When we live the crucified life, nothing can truly harm us. You can’t hurt a dead person.” So wrote a friend, singer/songwriter Becky Spencer, this week. “Our churches are filled with bored, dissatisfied Christians. Not because our God isn’t enough, but because most of them have only visited the cross once for salvation. It is meant to be embraced every day.”

I did not know Shahbaz Bhatti. Three of my close friends did, but I cannot say that I would speak his mind here. However, his murder this week has me thinking more than ever about the persecution of Christians, and our proper response as believers ourselves – response not alone to the situation of martyrs, but response to Christ’s commission. And it all has to do with the Cross, the Cross.

Jesus came to save us from our sins, but not necessarily from the effects of our sins; nor the world’s persecution; nor evil, punishment, or sickness; all because there is sin in the world. And as He offers forgiveness from sin, it might be said that He did not come to grab us from hell or push us into Heaven. His ministry was to keep hell out of people, and put Heaven into us, so to speak. We are to do His work while we are here.

Christians often think we have to “close the deal” and assure that people have eternal life. But all we can do is quote the Promise. To presume that we can do any more might be to blaspheme the Holy Spirit, whose work this really is. Believers, by responding to the invitation to believe on Jesus, have a say in that; and God, of course, is the Judge.

So what is left? To servants like Shabaz Bhatti, and to missionaries in heathen areas (including – think about it – you and me, right in our neighborhoods), our work is to do Christ’s work. Here. And now. Working to keep hell out of people and planting a little Heaven – by sharing belief in Jesus Christ who has given His own life for us, as Shahbaz testified; that He is not just one way, but the way to God – this must be our mission. And our privilege. And our Cross.

Jesus frankly said that the world will hate that message. It hated that message when He spoke it, and He was crucified on the cross. It hates that message when we speak it, and the world will likewise and therefore hate us. To take up the Cross and follow Him is not an option. It is as much of being a Christian as confessing Jesus as Savior.

The Book of Revelation tells us that to add or subtract a word from scripture is anathema, yet I would venture to say that in Heaven another verse has been added this week to Hebrews, Chapter 11. That book is “the Hall of Fame of Faith,” listing great heroes and martyrs of the faith – many of whom did not live to see the fruits of their service and sacrifice. “By faith, Shahbaz…”

God bless you, brother. None of your countrymen will come closer to the Truth through the motives of a dozen cowardly murderers. But I pray that millions will see the Truth through your martyrdom, your purity of faith, your service to the cross of Christ. And He will be glorified. Amen.

+

In honor of Shabaz Bhatti and persecuted Christians worldwide:

Click: Anthem of the Persecuted

I want to acknowledge the words and wisdom of three friends who were privileged to know Shahbaz — Hope Flinchbaugh, Marlene Bagnull, and Dan Wooding, for whom this week has been trying; Becky Spencer (“sure you can quote me – the Holy Spirit doesn’t copyright inspiration!”); and insights I gained this week while researching a book, from messages by Lyman Abbott.

2-21-11

Presidents’ Day. A holiday one of whose aspects I abhor: its mush-brained attempt at “inclusiveness.” Beyond a thank-you for the time certain presidents served, and sacrifices they probably made – already covered by various grade schools named for them, and the pensions they received – simply doing one’s job should not be justification for a federal holiday.

To honor all is a way of honoring none. For historical saps like James Buchanan, sharing a national holiday with Abraham Lincoln is to knock the latter off a pedestal. Historical mistakes like John Tyler and Millard Fillmore should not be mentioned in the same hemisphere as George Washington. Some few presidents did great things in great ways.

The impetus for President’s Day was provided by unions and retailers, who desired another long weekend on the standard calendar. The result? Our civic saints live in the popular image, now, as Abe Lincoln impersonators hawking used cars on TV commercials; and George Washington (his talking portrait on animated dollar bills), not the Father of His Country, but the Father of the President’s Day Weekend of Unbelievable Bargains and Sales.

Americans used to reject, but now embrace, the Marxian mindset of mediocrity – every thing, and every one, must be leveled. It once was the French who, in the name of equality, sought to abolish First-Class seats on their trains. “Why is it that the Socialists never abolish the second-class?” a French friend of mine once moaned. Now in America we pull down some of humankind’s greatest figures, like Washington and Lincoln, in order to – what? not hurt the feelings of Franklin Piece and Chester Alan Arthur?There’s a lesson for our school children: grow up to be elected president, have a pulse, and you, too, will have post offices close a day in your honor.

Obviously I am eager to honor Washington and Lincoln, whose birthdays, this month, officially have been homogenized, as have their reputations. I do honor them, frequently, in my writing, and in discussions, and conversations with children, and in my reading and my studies. So should we all do with people and causes that we revere, more so when the culture obscures them from our vision.

In my case I hold Theodore Roosevelt in particular regard. I am finishing a biography of him (for Regnery, to be published this October), and one thing I have come to appreciate about TR is something that largely has been neglected by history books. That is, the aspect of his fervent Christian faith. In some ways, he might be seen as the most Christian and the most religious of all presidents.

This is (admittedly) a subjective list, and a difficult one to compute and compile. TR’s name at the top might surprise some people, yet that surprise might itself bear witness to the nature of his faith: privately held, but permeating countless speeches, writings, and acts. His favorite verse was Micah 6:8 – “What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”

He was of the Dutch Reformed Church. He participated in missions work with his father, a noted philanthropist. He taught weekly Sunday School classes during his four years at Harvard. He wrote for Christian publications.

He called his bare-the-soul speech announcing his principles when running in 1912, “A Confession of Faith.” Later he closed perhaps the most important speech of his life, the clarion-call acceptance of the Progressive Party nomination that year, “We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord!” That convention featured evangelical hymns and closed with “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

He titled one his books Foes of Our Own Household (after Matthew 10:36) and another, Fear God and Take Your Own Part. He once wrote an article for The Ladies’ Home Journal, “Nine Reasons Why Men Should Go To Church.” After TR left the White House, he was offered university presidencies and many other prominent jobs. He chose instead to become Contributing Editor of The Outlook, a small Christian weekly magazine – tantamount to an extremely popular ex-president today (if we had one) choosing to edit WORLD Magazine, or RealClearPolitics.com, or ASSIST News Service, instead of higher-profile positions.

He was invited to deliver the Earl Lectures at Pacific Theological Seminary in 1911, but declined due to a heavy schedule. Knowing he would be near Berkeley on a speaking tour, however, he offered to deliver the lectures if he might be permitted to speak extemporaneously, not having time to prepare written texts of the five lectures, as was the custom. It was agreed, and TR spoke for 90 minutes each evening – from the heart and without notes – on the Christian’s role in modern society.

… and so on. TR was not perfect, but he knew the One who is. Fond of saying that he would “speak softly and carry a big stick,” it truly can be said, also, that Theodore Roosevelt hid the Word in his heart, and acted boldly. He was a great American because he was thoroughgoing good man; and he was a good man because he was a humble believer.

Remember Theodore Roosevelt on President’s Day. Remember him on his own birthday, Oct 27. Remember him every day – we are not seeing his kind any more.

+

Two vids celebrating Theodore Roosevelt: a clip from the movie The Wind and the Lion: “The world will never love the US; it might respect us; it might come to fear us; but it will never love us.” —
Click: The Affinity of America and the Grizzly Bear — Brian Keith as TR

2-7-11

This weekend is the centennial of Ronald Reagan’s birth, and he has been, rightly, in the news. We surely need a dose of the Gipper’s optimism, faith, and policies these days. Even the current occupant of the White house thinks so, at the least in part. He read an autobiography of Reagan over the Christmas holidays, and publicly has been respectful to his memory.

Commentators have called the State of the Union speech Obama’s “Reagan moment,” for some reason. In a coincidence of timing, the 25th anniversary of the Challenger disaster also recently was observed; and President Reagan’s speech to the nation – “they touched the face of God” – was replayed to the benefit of us all. Lumps in the throat do not have expiration-dates.

That politicians since Reagan have cast themselves in his image, or encouraged others to do so, seems almost sacrilegious; and the Challenger speech is one affirmation of that. The recent presidential speech, a putative Balm in Tucson, is said to have been Reaganesque. The admonition allegedly inspiring a nation – “All of us… should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children’s expectations” – is one from which, I suspect, Mr Reagan would have dissented. I surely do.

I have nothing against children. I have been father to three, and recall being one myself. Some of my best friends are children. Children are wonderful and precious, gifts from God, the Bible tells us. But they are… children.

Their innocence is being stolen in a thousand ways these days, by this society (another topic for another time, but I believe this to be true, and a cultural crime). Now we’re supposed to burden them with drafting a list of expectations their parents and elders should live up to? How do kids wish we would act, and would have them to act? What would those dreams be?

If most children were honest, their lists would shock parents, elders, and teachers – at least those who forget what they were like as kids themselves:

* Abolish rules about homework and bedtime;
* Get over our hang-ups about hair, dress, hygiene, and keeping a neat room;
* Promise not to ask about e-mails, phone calls, certain friends, or that music. Et cetera.

I will jump from this new standard – that we should live up to our children’s expectations – and from speculation about what another president would not have said… to what the Bible does say, in disagreement: Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it (Proverbs 22:6).

That is not some sacred fortune-cookie saying; it is more, even, than a prediction. It is a command – TRAIN UP children. For society to operate on a contrary standard (and, of course, everything it represents, and everything that flows from such beliefs) might, some day, lead to a country that is without any standards; not just a culture that strives to “live up to children’s expectations.”

The best wish for our children is that they desire to live up to our expectations of them… and that everyone’s aspiration be to meet God’s expectations.

The beautiful irony of the Christian life is that children don’t have to follow their inclinations or rebellion, and adults don’t have to impose authority or cram some set of rules. We find victory in surrender. All Jesus wants us to do – His expectation – is to lean on His Everlasting Arms.

.

The great gospel song of that title is here plaintively sung by Iris DeMent. Long an outstanding singer/songwriter, Iris’s version of this classic hymn closes out the hit movie True Grit; and is receiving deserved praise. The artwork in this video (a beautiful slideshow production of the excellent Beanscot Channel on YouTube) shows a variety of children, doing what Jesus expects of them, and all of us, leaning back in His loving arms.

Click: Leaning On the Everlasting Arms

1-31-11

Recently in this space we regretted aspects of contemporary American life that tend to turn many a meaningful thing into meaningless bling. Our sound-bite society has been fed, and therefore has come to prefer, life’s pleasures as if they are spectaculars on an IMAX screen; and life’s challenges to be as brief as  downloads on an iPod.

“’Tis a Gift Be Simple,” began the old Shaker hymn of the 1840s. At one time this could have been the anthem of the American folk. Modesty, industry, simplicity: not goals inculcated by teaching and preaching, but ways of life, of living and giving; willingly embraced.

The next line of the sacred American folk hymn is significant today, perhaps honored most in the breach. “‘Tis a gift to be free.”

Like many virtues, “freedom” is inchoate. Is it the right of Americans? Is it a birthright – inherited but able to be squandered? Freedom from what? Free to do what? Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). Free from sin; and there is no other way to this glorious freedom. At the same time, we are free to sin. In Galatians (5:13) we are told, “You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity to indulge your flesh, but through love serve one another.”

It would seem that, more than a right, freedom is a gift. A gift of God, not of governments or any other agencies of man. Not an entitlement to be indulged, but a privilege to be worthy of… to become worthy of. Continually.

The question in those lights is pertinent this week. Societies squandering their rights, people rallying to demand their rights, and regimes denying rights, are all in the news. Street protests across the Arab world are being met by repression… and leaders who flee with their lives. We find ourselves suddenly in a historical moment, as during the French Revolution or the fall of Communism, when hour by hour, seismic changes occur. Scenarios that seemed impossible yesterday are reality today, and might be obsolete tomorrow. Political boundaries might not be changing, but societies are transformed overnight. “The old order changeth.”

Also this week, Freedom House, a human-rights group, issued its annual report. It documented “the longest continuous period of decline since it began compiling the annual index nearly 40 years ago,” according to Agence France-Presse.

Repression and widespread denial of rights is nearing levels of the post-Cold War era, the report says. Areas of deep concern include press freedom, political and civil rights, ethnic prejudice, forced prostitution, arms and drug traffic, corruption, slavery, and genocide. Two fewer governments than in the previous report are characterized as “free” (87 countries in all; only 43 per cent of the world’s population). And, alarmingly, religious persecution and deadly violence sharply are increasing. We read the news; we see the reports – and yet we don’t know a fraction of the horrible occurrences.

Christians frequently are the targets of prejudice these days, in democracies that are familiar to us; and expulsion or murder, in countries that are strange to us. It increasingly seems that the strange is becoming familiar, and the familiar is becoming strange.

A thousand years ago, there were lands of legend – not only of fiction – where individuals had to fight for freedom, defend their faith, and “earn their spurs.” And they did! Today, in this land, if it were to become the case that it is against the law to be a Christian… would there be enough evidence to convict you?

.

Here is a song about that time in history, when knights earned their spurs, standing for God and valor when “freedoms” were not automatic. It is sung by the London boys choir Libera.

Click: For God and For Valor

The lyrics of this song:

When a knight won his spurs, in the stories of old,
He was gentle and brave, he was gallant and bold;
With a shield on his arm and a lance in his hand,
For God and for valour he rode through the land.

No charger have I, and no sword by my side,
Yet still to adventure and battle I ride,
Though back into storyland giants have fled,
And the knights are no more and the dragons are dead.

Let Faith be my shield and let joy be my steed
‘Gainst the dragons of anger, the ogres of greed;
And let me set free with the sword of my youth,
From the castle of darkness, the power of Truth.

1-17-11

The shootings in Tucson should direct us to think about heroes and villains. There is an obsession in America to fill in every space on the template of every event. Of course there were heroes that morning, but the people so called in that horrible scene firmly have rejected the honorific. Also to be rejected is the compulsion of some people instantaneously to invent villains. The shooter was villain enough.

Whether we call them heroic, or wise and courageous, two figures impressed us: an older lady and a young man. Patricia Maisch grabbed the second ammunition magazine. Twenty-year-old Daniel Hernandez rushed toward the gunfire, and rendered aid to Rep Giffords in ways that likely kept her from dying. One prevented more killings; the other saved the wounded.

We all have seeds of heroism in us; and, God help us, possibly cowardly tendencies as well. The moment of crisis cannot be scripted. On the other hand, wisdom and bravery are acquired traits. They can be cultivated, and are more worthy of honor than “mere” heroism… especially in a country where athletes and movie stars routinely are called heroes. The term has become cheap.

I am reminded of William James’s observations during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. He noticed that, in the chaos, a new social order instantly was established. Upper-class bankers, for instance, readily performed menial tasks as they saw the need; conversely, many manual laborers instinctively assumed superior tasks – directing traffic, managing people, assuming responsibilities. None of those acts was merely heroic, they were more: wise, courageous, displaying character. Human nature in the crucible.

I could not escape the thought that the “memorial service” on Wednesday was a stark contrast to the Character Amidst Carnage we all saw Saturday morning. It was a pep rally, with whoops and whistles and chants; not a service. There was more adulation for a celebrity, than grief for the dead, wounded, and survivors.

A pagan ritual with feathers and importuning to Father Sky replaced – not even accompanied – prayers that would have been coherent to 95 per cent of the people, and to their God. Shouts and cheers from the bleachers at inopportune moments were more redolent of rock concerts; and, if he had wanted, the First Celebrity could have stilled the multitudes and returned to the reverent duty at hand.

What we sorely need is fewer theatrics at such events, if, indeed, such events are necessary at all (after all, victims’ churches and families held their own observances). TV spectacles in huge stadiums. Logos created for this service’s hand-outs. T-shirts manufactured for the “memorial service.” Politically correct, and politically hostile, statements to the press. Presidents of universities and of countries asking for “moments of silence.” Silence? Is the word, or the act of, PRAYER radioactive?

That is what we need more of: prayer. Excuse me — Shut up and pray. Simply pray. Where are simple prayers, simple faith, simple services, simple responses, these days?

…’tis a Gift to be simple, after all.

The University of Arizona Orchestra closed the rally with a performance of Simple Gifts, from Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring. Specifically, it was an arrangement of the orchestral score by Copland to Martha Graham’s ballet of that name. As such, it was discordant, both musically and in suitability. The secular music is of two lifelong supporters of Communism and the Communist Party; both virulent secularists; Copland a homosexual crusader — the performance, perhaps fine in some contexts, I simply consider out of place at a “memorial service.” Better, if the words and music pleased, to perform a… simple… version of the original work that not many Americans know.

Simple Things did not have its origin with Copland, nor its fate in countless TV commercials. Simple Things is a hymn of the devout Shaker community, written by Elder Joseph Brackett in 1848. The sect’s Christian faith, like their music and their famous furniture, was simple… and the Shakers themselves may be nearly as extinct as admirable Simplicity in America today.

Complicated, choreographed extravaganzas, with everything figured out for us and arranged in every politically correct detail – and spiritual substance left ‘way behind – is not the type of prize to be sought in a Christian Republic like America once was. ‘Tis a Gift to be simple.

Click: A Gift To Be Simple

A beautiful performance of this American hymn by Alison Kraus and violoncellist Yo-Yo Ma… simple, just the two of them.

1-10-11

That we live in a “throwaway culture” is a cliché. Clichés usually become clichés because they are true. In the 1950s a big topic of discussion in America was  the business concept of Planned Obsolescence – the manufacture of things just shoddy enough so that consumers would get a Buzz from the Bling of the New, until those things fell apart. Next, advertisers helped convince people that replacing those obsolete things was better than fixing them.

The slippery slope was greased. The American culture has moved to Disposable Everything. From appliances needing repair to clothes that need mending, fixing is not just out of fashion, but practically disreputable. Near the bottom of the cultural slide, inevitably, are disposable marriages and disposable kids. Then, abortions, “mercy killings,” and, yes, government-sponsored “death-panel” counseling. Another manifestation is revolving theology – “moral relativism,” a pick-and-choose set of standards that represents Open-Mindedness; that is, minds so open that peoples’ brains fall out.

But some things are right anyway, true anyway, worth it… anyway.

A major denomination whose membership rolls have been shrinking in recent decades (coincident with its Disposable Theology, more and more and more liberal on doctrine) is running a TV commercial campaign, imploring people, “Visit us; you’ll like us.” I suppose they hold nice pot-luck dinners, but for a church to twist its message to be something people “like” to hear, is to bring Planned Obsolescence to religion. Jesus did not go the cross for telling people what they wanted to hear.

He was condemned to the cross because He said things people NEEDED to hear.

Dedicated Christians are swimming upstream these days – to state the situation mildly. We tell the old, old story… and are met by firestorms of opposition from the culture, from the entertainment world, from the music industry, from radio and TV, from Hollywood, from the mainstream media, from the courts, from politicians and bureaucrats… and, too often, from apostate churches.

How do we respond? If we hate compromise on every side, the first thing we should avoid doing is to… compromise.

This week, amateur divers found the wreckage of the USS Revenge. The ship, commanded by Oliver Hazard Perry, was lost in a storm 200 years ago off the coast of Providence. Two years later, in a naval victory on Lake Erie, he uttered the famous words, “We have met the enemy and they are ours!” The motto on his battle flag became, “Don’t Give Up the Ship,” still the U S Navy’s motto.

America needs citizens who say, “Don’t give up the ship,” and Christian Patriots must be in the front of the lines. It can be discouraging to lose battles and see our culture slip away – our heritage rudely transformed – but we must fight anyway.

Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love Him. — James 1:12

We might lose some battles, but we fight anyway. We might lose some goals, but we dream anyway. We might lose some allies, but we pray for them anyway. We might lose some denominations, but not the Word of God.

These things might be tough to put into practice, but they are essential to remember. That’s why stirring words and music, a good anthem, is needed today… and here is a nomination. Martina McBride’s classic song is a grassroots battle-hymn, perfect for this moment of crisis in our culture wars.

Click:  I Do It Anyway

It came upon a midnight clear… that is: the moment Thanksgiving Day ended, the Christmas Season formally began. That’s when I was a kid. Now the Christmas decorations in stores are festooned after Halloween, sometimes before that. Pretty soon, Santa Claus will be hunting for Easter eggs and marching in Fourth of July parades.

Nearly everyone decries the “commercialization of Christmas,” and so they should. But in American society it seems like the observance of Christmas itself might disappear before the culture of consumerism does. However, the commercial aspects of the holiday ultimately will harm the celebration of Christ’s birth as much as have the adoption of the pagan-originated date and the traditions of evergreen trees. Not much, unless we let it happen.

About which we say, Hallelujah!

Around us we see another seasonal tradition beginning, and this one we can embrace. In malls and shopping plazas, vocal ensembles and choral societies have been gathering, and, despite the fact that ‘tis the season to be shopping, they break out in the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah. The mighty music – and the mightier words – draws the attention of everybody within earshot.

In Philadelphia, the atrium of Macy’s Department Store is home to the largest pipe organ in the United States. Recently, 650 choristers mingled with shoppers until the moment to sing this wonderful music arrived, and the blast-furnace organ notes combined with thousands of voices (for shoppers joined in) – and it was glory indeed.

This has happened elsewhere too. Local organizers can claim that these are field-trips of singing clubs, or activities of an opera society; or publicity events; or class projects; maybe even churches’ outreach. (You will see in this video clip, signs proclaiming the performance a “random act of culture” – a rather secular camouflage.) Yet when all is said and done – or seen and sung – what has happened is the proclamation of the prophecy and birth of mankind’s Savior; of the Incarnation; of the promised reign of the Christ.

To mingle this news, and Handel’s anointed music, with busy shoppers and the preoccupations of a “holiday” season, is brilliant… redeeming the Message, and restoring its place in the midst of our lives, even for a moment; forever, and ever; Hallelujah!

Click:   Hallelujah!

Thanks to Marlene Bagnull of the Greater Philadelphia Christian Writers Conference for forwarding the clip linked above ( http://tinyurl.com/26hfmt8 ) from Philly; and to Diane Obbema for sending the clip of another Flash Mob singing the Hallelujah Chorus in a food court ( http://tinyurl.com/25xpqy8 ). There have been other such outbreaks around the country… maybe next year we will all participate in our own communities!

Sometimes they get it right. After all the changes, in schools and stores, of Easter observance to Spring break, Christmas to “Winter,” Thanksgiving to “Harvest”; not to mention President’s Day, which blurs the commemoration of ANY president by declaring it for EVERY president… I think it’s appropriate that “Decoration Day” of my youth is now called “Memorial Day.”

And then we had Armistice Day. According to legend, the World War I (the “war to end all wars”) cease-fire was held up until 11:11 on 11-11 to suit President Wilson’s whim. True or not, and not knowing how many extra corpses piled up to hold the schedule, it is characteristic of Wilson. OK, Armistice Day is now Veteran’s Day. Here the wider net of a title IS more appropriate.

An article this week in Assist News Service reviewed a new book by Pastor John MacArthur in which he contends that English-language translators have long mistranslated the word in the New Testament for “slave” as “servant.” http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/2010/s10110027.htm Perhaps translators were squeamish about the negative connotations of slavery, but if humans are described as slaves to sin, surely we can consider ourselves slaves to Christ. Just as surrender to God somehow brings victory, so can slavery to Christ bring freedom.

We need, then, to think of slavery in a new way, spiritually (and in its worldly aspects, too, because slavery still exists in many places). But we also can think of servanthood in a new way, too. Let us not forsake serving Christ, and let us remember that we serve Him by serving others.

Let us think this week, with Veteran’s Day coming, of “those who serve.”

No matter what any of us think of America’s two current wars, or any of the past wars, or any wars in general, it is the serviceman and servicewoman — think of the root word — who do the work that their countrymen are not able or not willing to do. Most servicemen do not hate the enemy: they might be taught to do so, but at most it is the leaders who define that policy. To me, the average serviceman (I am talking of any time, in any culture) does not primarily hate: he loves. The flag. The home soil. The way of life back home. This is a mighty picture of servanthood.

When they become veterans — that is, when they leave the military — it is the nation’s duty to serve THEM. The time, the sacrifices, the families left behind, the wounds and injuries… too often are all forgotten by an ungrateful nation. How many veterans feel that recognition of their service has been relegated to one holiday, in the minds of many?

Perhaps we should think of every day of the year as Veterans’ Day. Then maybe we can set one day apart for even more special thoughts — we could call November 11th “Servants’ Day.”

Here, again, a gospel song with special significance this week:

Click:  Gone Home

This week: Swirling days of Hallowe’en, Elections, and Reformation Day.

They are all, sort of, about the same things; this year anyway; if we regard Hallowe’en from the original perspective all All Saint’s Day.

This will not be a message primarily addressing the elections, although Reform is needed and Reform is driving the enthusiasm. It will not be a message about the perversion of All Hallow’s Eve, although it is a manifestation of the nexus of corrupted beliefs and commercial pollution in our culture. ’nuff said. Neither is my concern the anniversary of the Protestant Reformation — specifically, that is, Reformation Sunday, just observed. Nor the issues surrounding the Catholic Church almost 500 years ago.

For I don’t think the Reformation started with Luther’s nailing 95 Theses to the church door at Wittenberg. Of course its stirrings were in the protests and martyrdom of earlier believers. But in Luther’s case I believe the Reformation started when he made a pilgrimage to Rome.

(Click for a short movie clip) :   Martin Luther in Rome

He realized, clearly, what had been around him in the culture, especially the church culture — growing in intensity, sinking in shame. Perverted doctrine… sex scandals… monetary corruption… a loss of purity. That is when his conscience, and his Bible training, and the Holy Spirit moved him to revulsion.

Again: I am not thinking here of the Church then. I am thinking of the church now. As a Protestant, I know several of its denominations best, so I can address them best; and I am moved to revulsion too.

Perverted doctrine — Churches more concerned with political correctness than the Word of God — and a “pick and choose” theology that makes sinners the author of new dogmas.

Sex scandals — Shame to the clergy, across all Protestant denominations; the Catholic church rocked to its foundations in the US and Europe.

Monetary corruption — When TV preachers plead for “seed offerings” and “faith gifts” and make links between salvation and buying trinkets or “unlocking” the Prosperity Gospel with “love offerings”… how in hell is that different from buying indulgences, kissing rings, and venerating phony relics? Buy your way to heaven! What has changed since Luther’s trip to Rome?

A loss of purity — “Christian” churches today are more concerned with offending sinners than saving them; more concerned with ministering to bodies alone and not souls; more concerned with what unchurched kids, or agnostics, or Jews, or Muslims, or homosexuals, or Oprah, think… than what God thinks.

If Luther were here today, he would have 95 new theses, maybe more, to nail somewhere. Maybe on a lot of churches’ doors. Maybe on the doors of movie theaters. Maybe on TV screens and computer screens. Maybe on the doors of the White House and Congress and the Supreme Court. Maybe on my door, and maybe yours. But the… should WE be the new Martin Luthers?

If there be real reform on Reformation Week — and election week — let it begin with us. And if push-backs come, if persecution follows, let us remember Luther’s astounding words: “Here I stand. I can do no other.”

Music and history: Click   Here I Stand

I was at a dinner party many years ago, back when my main business was cartooning and I lived in the artist-and-writers colony around Westport, Connecticut. I was talking with the wife of a young cartoonist I had known for a couple year, and mentioned something about my faith and my church.

She stopped me. “You’re a Christian? I didn’t know that!” So was she, and we shared a whole lot. A new level was established in our friendship.

Yet that statement — “I didn’t know you’re a Christian!” — haunted me that night, that week, and still does, years later. God forbid that anyone we know, or someone we meet, has to be told, whether by whispers or by announcement, that we are followers of Christ.

Yes, I know. The subject never came up. Yes, I know, I wasn’t aware she was a Christian either, and likely was a dedicated believer. But, we cannot get away from what I said, and mean literally — God FORBID that people have be told that we are followers of Christ. That decision, one way or another, is totally our own!

Is He our personal savior… or our personal secret?

Looking for music to drive this message home, I decided this week to share with you a poem on this subject. It is “urban poetry.” From my perspective it puts the Hip in the Hop. And amazingly in sync with the convictions I dealt with.

There is an astounding movement in Los Angeles and Lynnwood CA called the Passion For Christ Movement — P4CM. Kids who have been saved from addiction, crime, homosexuality, hypocrisy, are living utterly transformed lives, on fire for Jesus. One aspect of their ministry is a night-spot, a coffee house, called the Lyricist Lounge, where people recite poetry, sing, testify, and share inspiration.

These kids are changing their city… after, very clearly, changing themselves.

Here is Karness Turner reciting his poem on the theme that I recalled this week…

Click:  Does Anybody Know That You’re a Christian?

I have had the privilege recently of reviewing the manuscript of a novel that might be (ought to be) published in the near future. I won’t give away the ending (or the beginning) (or the middle) (or the title) (or the characters) (or the message)…

… but I’d love to give away one of the subtexts, which is to beware of organized religion.

Speaking for myself, I tend to distrust anything organized, but that’s another matter. Now the world, which looks for any stick with which to beat Christianity, invariably points to religious wars as pro forma warning-labels against spirituality. In truth, however, most “religious” wars have probably been waged using religion only as an excuse.

Moreover, the serious attacks, excesses and atrocities committed in the name of Jesus… do not mean that Jesus would commit them. The world too often forgets that Jesus is the standard, True and Holy. When people scurry around, constructing and construing, blaming and naming, if they fall short of that Standard they dishonor themselves more than they dishonor the Savior.

Before the “amens” roll, it is good to recognize that Christians, also, forget this fact too often. The sad truth — the more important deal than wars and doctrinal arguments (although doctrine is important) — is that the church often fails its mission in direct proportion to the extent it is “organized” religion. Youth pastors who serve (Barna Research says) an average of only 1.5 years — what heartache must that represent? Churches that don’t preach the whole Word. Children abused by priests. Pastors involved in sexual scandals. Judgmentalism. “Open-Mindedness” so open that theologians’ brains fall out. Politics, bureaucracy, and pride on church boards and committees. Is this the church Jesus wanted? — the Bride of Christ awaiting His return?

“What sort of music accompanies this heavy message?” Well, it’s the same message, but a more light-hearted delivery. Hilarious, in fact. But the chorus that Buddy Greene returns to in this living-room get-together is the message for this week, and has been for 2000 years: “Jesus — That’s All!”

You can beware — that is, be wary — of organized religion’s pitfalls by keeping this song in your mental iPod!

Click:  Denomination Blues