Dec 21 2009

Misusing Scripture #2

Category: church,religion,theology — harmonicminer @ 9:31 am

The previous post in this series is here.

Matthew 18 has these verses:

15“If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. 16But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ 17If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

These verses seem to be about the appropriate response when someone sins against you in some more or less personal way.

Leaders in churches or para-church organizations should be cautious about suggesting this passage as the correct guidance for people who disagree with some aspect of their leadership or policies.  There are two reasons for this:

1)  The passage isn’t about disagreement with the decisions and policies of the leadership of a church or para-church organization.   It’s about personal transgressions.  That might be the case if a person in leadership does or says something inappropriate with regard to an individual, engages in some obviously immoral behavior, etc.  It is not the case when the criticism is about the policies or decisions of a person in leadership.

2)  If a leader inappropriately invokes this passage when some criticism is made, it is a double edged sword.  Yes, it might convince someone to approach the leader first with their complaint.  But there is a rapid escalation in the passage.   Leaders who attempt to defend themselves with Matthew 18:15 risk that someone will read a couple of verses farther, and decide that it’s time to air matters in public after a single solo conversation and a single “group” conversation.

So, what scriptures DO apply when criticism of policies or decisions of leaders are involved?  It’s not so simple.   But there is a discussion of it here.  Generally, if you don’t like the policies or decisions of a leader, you’re limited to working through the normal political process of your institution or church, unless you believe the policies or decisions amount to false teaching, or support for false teaching done by others.  In that case, you have quite a bit of scripture reading to do, and commentaries to read, before you do much about it.

If you’re a leader of a church or para-church organization, the more restrictive advice of the epistles is a better source for ways you can manage such criticism than Matthew 18.

The next post in this series is here.

Dec 19 2009

Misusing Scripture #1

Category: church,religion,theology — harmonicminer @ 10:19 am

The use and misuse of scripture has been on my mind lately.

It is very popular, when someone wants to blunt someone else’s criticism, to quote Jesus saying, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.”  (Matthew 7:1)

This is often said to deflect a valid criticism of someone’s behavior, perspectives, attitudes, etc.  The problem, of course, is that it’s usually a ridiculous application of the saying.

The next verse says this:  “For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. ”

The clear implication is that judging is not mere evaluation.  It is, instead, taking action to impose a penalty of some kind, a penalty you have no right to impose.

The New Testament is full of injunctions to be discerning, and it is full of instruction about what to do regarding the failures and sin of others.  Clearly, these instructions imply that evaluation will be done, and that evaluation will be based on known standards.

It would be “judging” if you thought that you were personally empowered to enforce a penalty upon someone else based on your evaluation.  It is not “judging” to observe that someone is not behaving according to biblical standards, though of course some discretion is required in terms of what you do or say about that observation.  That’s exactly what the Biblical instructions are for.

Start a tally.  The next 100 times you hear someone quote Matthew 7:1, ask yourself if they are simply trying to avoid any evaluation of their behavior, attitude or perspectives.

I’m guessing that’s the case about 95% of the time.

Or more.

The next post in this series is here.

Dec 11 2009

Is the Reformation over? Not quite yet…

Category: church,religion,theology — harmonicminer @ 10:08 am

First a protestant, then a catholic, on what divides us, and what unites us. There are still some issues to be resolved.  Much more at each link.

The Reformation in a Nutshell

There used to be a time when your loyalty to the Protestant cause was judged by how much you hated Catholics. But today, with all the ecumenical dialogue, the Manhattan statements, the ECT council, and the postmodern virtue of tolerance, people are much more willing to let water under the bridge. “Maybe we overreacted” is the thought of many.

To the Catholics, Protestants are no longer anathema (which is pretty bad), but are “separated brethren” (which is not so bad).

Times are changing. But have the issues changed?

Hermeneutics and the Authority of Scripture

It is my pleasure to be able to write on a subject where we as Catholics share so much common ground with our Reformed brothers, and even with most Evangelicals. In fact, it is no small thing that we agree upon foundational truths contra mundum in a time when even many Christians deny them.

This article intends to show that, though Protestants agree with the Catholic Church on the basic truths about Scripture and its authority, the Reformed view of Scripture errs in three respects: in its assumption about the canon of Scripture, in its view of the authority of Scripture, and in its view of the role of Sacred Scripture in the life of the Church. These errors are harmful to the faith, and the truth proclaimed by the Catholic Church about its Sacred books is the perfect corrective. I will begin this examination of the authority of Sacred Scripture with our points of agreement.

There is cause for hope in eventual Christian unity, I think.   We have a ways to go, however.  And the eventual rapprochement will necessarily involve both sides giving up something non-essential, for the sake of the essentials.

Oct 04 2009

Louder is better?!?

Category: church,music,theology — harmonicminer @ 11:26 am

The following is a prime example of taking a phrase in scripture and making too much of it… while also suggesting that God is impressed with the volume of our music

You are familiar with the exhortation that music in worship is summoned to be skilful music (Ps. 33:3). We are not permitted to just throw anything together and call it good. But skill is not the only characteristic we are told to cultivate. “Sing unto him a new song; play skilfully with a loud noise” (Ps. 33:3).

There is a temptation when churches pursue excellence in music, and that is the temptation of becoming music snobs. And when that happens, a party spirit sets in and we start feeling superior to those who praise God with three chords maximum. But holding on to what we know about musical excellence, what do these brothers and sisters do that is better than how we do it? Well, frequently, contemporary worship music is louder than what we do. This is a clear and identifiable superiority. The Bible says that we are to worship God with shouts, with cymbals, with percussion, with noise. This is as much a biblical standard as that of playing skillfully—all the earth is to make a loud noise and rejoice (Ps. 98: 4); the cymbals are to be loud (Ps. 150:5); those who trust in God are to shout for joy (Ps. 5: 11); God ascends with a shout (Ps. 47:5).

God does not just want quality in music; He wants quantity. And to take pride in the quality if it is mumbled is just as wrong headed as to take pride in the noise apart from excellence in execution. We don’t get to pick and choose, and lord it over those who pick and choose a different deficiency. Adulterers on Mondays and Wednesdays do not get to feel superior to adulterers who sin on Tuesdays and Fridays.

So clap your hands, all you peoples, shout unto God with a voice of triumph.

OK, gimme a break here.  Equating the importance of musical taste to the choice of day to commit adultery is so far over the top that it would be an understatement to call it hyperbole.

But louder is better? More Godly?

NIV renders Psalm 33:3 this way:

“Sing to him a new song;
play skillfully, and shout for joy.”

A better approach to this is to acknowledge that part of playing skillfully is to play softly when required… and that, in context, “shouting for joy” in musical performance most likely means playing or singing it like you mean it, and not just going through the motions. Playing and singing like it matters. Like you’re doing something important, not merely reciting musically by rote, but being personally, completely involved in what you’re doing, namely worshipping God with music.

But simple, sheer volume? So, if one Marshall stack represents salvation, does a double stack represent sanctification?

I don’t see any amps in this picture.

Oct 03 2009

Knowing truth

Category: church,philosophy,religion — harmonicminer @ 10:06 am

I recently read an excellent book, which I’ll be discussing more in a subsequent post, titled Knowing Christ Today: Why we can trust spiritual knowledge, by Dallas Willard.

The book is about the idea that true knowledge is not bounded solely by the scientific method, and that we can know other things as surely as we know things from a scientific perspective.  It’s an excellent work, and it calls us to rethink the abdication by too many in the intelligentsia from claiming to “know” anything that matters with any high degree of confidence.  It is, in a sense, a book about authority.  Who has the right to say that they know a thing?  What does it mean to know a thing, and what responsibilities are incumbent on a person who knows?  Willard situates the idea of what it means to “know Christ” in the larger context of knowledge that is not merely “scientific.”

In some sense, the Protestant Reformation was partly about who has the right to claim to “know” something about God, and to act is if they have true knowledge of Him.  Yet this carried with it some problems of its own, as explained by Fr. Barron in this video.

h/t:  Francis Beckwith

Where does this leave us?  The Roman Catholic church was so certain of its authority to determine Truth that it had little qualm about executing heretics.  Even the Protestant John Calvin participated in such a thing.  It’s difficult to see how the claim to knowledge of God justified the murder of those who merely disagreed.  To extend Fr. Barron’s analogy, referees aren’t allowed to shoot players on whom they call a technical foul.

Roman Catholic abuses of power and improperly made claims of knowledge were part of the fuel for the Protestant Reformation.  However, when they’ve had too much political power, Protestants haven’t always done much better.  The Roman church has occasionally apologized for past excesses done in the name of its knowledge of God, but has perhaps not always grappled with the cognitive dissonance of claiming historical, apostolic authority, while simultaneously denying the rightness of some of its applications.   In the name of knowledge of God, Protestants have too often allowed themselves to be divided over matters that are not central to how we should live, and what the nature of our relationships to others should be.  Even larger issues like free will and predestination have little discernible impact on the day to day life of believers, who all live as if they have free will, but hope God has plans for them.

This history is part of what’s behind the fear of claims of spiritual knowledge.  People are, with some justification, a touch nervous about anyone who claims to really know God.   In the past, such people have sometimes been those who were willing to kill to enforce their perspective.  But, in modern times, other than the case of Islam, such fear is almost totally a smokescreen.

These days, most resistance to the idea that we can have true knowledge of God is from people who are afraid of the claims such knowledge will make on their lives.

If some things really are true, then we must live differently.

Aug 25 2009

Consoling the inconsolable

Category: church,ministry,religion,theology — harmonicminer @ 12:38 pm

I have a friend who is a chaplain for the local sheriff’s department.    We’ll call him Fred (not his real name).  He is a former Navy man, and he also served many years as police officer, I think mostly as a Deputy Sheriff, though I’m not entirely certain.  He’s a middle aged guy now, retired after some hard years of service, but on call when there is a need.  As you may expect, these things come in waves.  He may go a few weeks without a particular issue that requires his services..  and then an officer may be severely injured or killed on the job, or some young man commits suicide and the department calls my friend to be with the family, or a toddler falls in a pool and is in a permanent coma, or simply dies, or…..  you get the idea.

There are several aspects of this that come to mind.

It’s fairly common for a certain segment of Christendom to portray Jesus as being sort of an extra-spiritual community organizer who took care of the poor while sharing profound narratives with subtle meanings about the responsibilities of the rich and privileged.  People who are so inclined tend to downplay the aspects of His teaching that involved life after death, salvation of the soul, eternal destination, and so on.  But whether or not Jesus was an ancient socialist just doesn’t enter into the picture when you’re trying to minister to people in extremis.  They are struggling with the single most important issue of life, namely the certain death we all face.

What do you say to someone who is suddenly, shockingly bereaved, or so injured that life will never be the same?  Pastors deal with people dying all the time…  but, thankfully, there is usually some warning, some opportunity, however inadequate, to prepare for the inevitable.  But Fred has to walk into a context where the entire family is stunned, in shock, perhaps blaming God for the entire situation, and somehow he has to bring the peace and love of God with him.  I’m sure that sometimes all he can do is just be there with them, and share in their suffering.  Jesus wept.

And I expect that, sometimes, when people in great pain are asking where God is right now, it may only be later that they realize that He sent an emissary to them, in the form of a chaplain who didn’t have to be there, but felt sent by God.

Consider the task.  Some people in these situations will be believers, and the job is to comfort them, and reinforce their faith that God is God.  Others will be complete agnostics, perhaps only now confronting the bedrock issues of life and death, and this can be an opportunity to show, without preaching directly at them, that there is another reality worthy of their attention.  There may be people who are “nominally” Christian, but haven’t taken it at all seriously…. and oddly, these may be inclined to blame themselves, thinking if they’d been “better Christians” maybe it all wouldn’t have happened.  And on the other side of it, these “nominally Christian” folks may be the ones most likely to blame God for it all.

So what kind of person can DO this work?  To start with, you must be steady as a rock.  You have to be able to confront great pain, and not melt away, which means this work can mostly only be done by those who have suffered plenty already.  You have to be enormously grounded yourself.  And you have to know that no one is really prepared for this work, and so your only recourse is to trust God to speak and show His love through you.

It takes a lot of courage.  I have the feeling that, tough guy that I know him to be, Fred sometimes goes home and simply mourns for the loss and pain that people must endure.

And God prepares him for the next call.

UPDATE:  I happen to be in the hospital at this update, for what will probably not be a major matter, though it has caused some discomfort.   My friend “Fred” just came to visit with another friend from church.  After he left, another friend from church called, and asked how Fred was doing.  I asked what she meant, and she told me that Fred had just spent 30 minutes doing CPR on an accident victim he’d come across on the highway, in a remote area where services were slow to arrive.  The man had probably been dead before Fred started…  but Fred just did what needed to be done until emergency services arrived.  Typically, he didn’t mention it to me when he visited me.

Aug 20 2009

The post-Christian society?

Category: church,religion — harmonicminer @ 9:09 am

Archbishop Chaput, author of “Render Unto Ceasar,” has some observations on the post-Christian society.

Let’s imagine a society. And let’s imagine that it’s advanced in the arts and sciences. It has a complex economy. It has a strong military. It also includes many different religions, although religion tends to be a private affair or a matter of civic ceremony.

It also has big problems, like a fertility rate stuck below replacement levels. Not enough children are born to replenish the adult population or do the work to keep society going. The state offers money for people to have more babies. But little seems to work.

Promiscuity is common. So are bisexuality and homosexuality. Birth control and abortion are legal, widely practiced and justified by leading intellectuals.

Sometimes a lawmaker will offer a measure to promote marriage, arguing that the future depends on stable families. These ideas usually go nowhere.

What society am I talking about? Most of the Western world would broadly fit this description. But actually I’m not talking about us.

I just outlined the state of the Mediterranean world at the time of Jesus Christ. We tend to look back on Greece and Rome as an age of extraordinary achievements. And of course, it was. But it had another side as well.

We don’t usually think of Plato and Aristotle endorsing infanticide as state policy. But they did. Hippocrates, the great medical pioneer, created an abortion kit that included sharp blades for cutting up the fetus and a hook for ripping it from the womb. Some years ago, archeologists discovered the probable remains of a Roman-era abortion and infanticide “clinic.” It was a sewer filled with the bones of more than 100 infants.

You can find all of this, and a lot more, in a little book from about 12 years ago, The Rise of Christianity by the Baylor University scholar Rodney Stark.

Why is any of this important?

People often say we’re living at a “post-Christian” moment. That’s supposed to describe the fact that Western nations have abandoned or greatly downplayed their Christian heritage in recent decades. But our “post-Christian” moment actually looks a lot like the pre-Christian moment. The signs of our times in the developed world-morally, intellectually, spiritually and even demographically-are very similar to the world at the time of the Incarnation.

The truth is, the challenges we face as European and American Catholics today are very much like those facing the first Christians. And it might help to have a little perspective on how they went about evangelizing their culture. They did such a good job that within 400 years Christianity was the world’s dominant religion and the foundation of Western civilization – and of course, the great Irish monastic tradition was one of its many fruits.

Rodney Stark, by the way, is an agnostic. He’s not a Christian believer. But he was intrigued by a couple of key questions. How did Christianity succeed? How was it able to accomplish so much so fast? As a social scientist, he focuses only on the facts he can verify. And he concludes that Christian success flowed from two things: first, Christian doctrine, and second, people being faithful to that doctrine. Stark writes that: “An essential factor in the [Christian] religion’s success was what Christians believed . . . And it was the way those doctrines took on actual flesh, the way they directed organizational actions and individual behavior, that led to the rise of Christianity.”

Or we can put it another way: The Church, through the Apostles and their successors, preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ. People believed in that Gospel. But the early Christians didn’t just agree to a set of ideas. Believing in the Gospel meant changing their whole way of thinking and living. It was a radical transformation — so radical they couldn’t go on living like the people around them anymore.

Stark says that one of the key areas in which Christians rejected the pagan culture around them was marriage and the family. From the start, to be a Christian meant believing that sexuality and marriage were sacred. From the start, to be a Christian meant turning away from abortion, infanticide, birth control, divorce, homosexual activity and marital infidelity — all those things widely practiced by their Roman neighbors.

The early Christians understood that they were members of a new worldwide family of God more important than any language or national borders. They saw the culture around them, despite all of its greatness and power, as a culture of despair, a society that was slowly killing itself. In fact, when you read early Christian literature, things like adultery and abortion are often described as “the way of death” or the “way of the [devil].”

Here’s the point I want to leave you with: If the world of pagan Rome and its Caesars could be won for Jesus Christ, we can do the same in our own day. But what it takes is the zeal and courage to live what we claim to believe.

While I’m not certain that historical sources support the claim that “from the start,” “to be a Christian meant turning away from….. birth control…,” the other items on that list are abundantly clear in the record.   I suppose I’m willing to be educated on the point, if clear references without significant counterfactuals can be presented.

The broader point of Archbishop Chaput, that ancient Roman times have a lot in common with the 21st century, is hard to debate.  His hope is very attractive that we can do much more to win the world for Christ.  Based on current trends, however, it’s becoming more and more likely that the world that is won for Christ will be the third world and Asia.

No doubt, as the center of world Christianity continues its move away from the USA and Europe, and more and more Korean and African missionaries are sent to the USA and Europe to try to win back an increasingly secularized culture (if current trends continue), some enterprising post-modern Korean or African academics will accuse their missionaries of colonial ambitions.

Aug 16 2009

President Obama, meet Rev. J. Wright

Category: church,Democrat,government,Republican,theology — harmonicminer @ 9:11 am

No, no, no, I meant the OTHER Rev. J. Wright, Rev. Joe Wright, who prayed this prayer to open a session of the Kansas legislature in 1996. Wrongly attributed in a circulating email to Billy Graham, this appears to have been borrowed from a 1995 Kentucky Prayer Breakfast, where it was prayed by Bob Russell.

Heavenly Father,
We come before you today to ask your forgiveness and seek your direction and guidance.
We know your Word says, “Woe to those who call evil good,” but that’s exactly what we’ve done.
We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and inverted our values.
We confess that we have ridiculed the absolute truth of your Word and called it moral pluralism.
We have worshipped other gods and called it multi-culturalism.
We have endorsed perversion and called it an alternative lifestyle.
We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery.
We have neglected the needy and called it self-preservation.
We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare.
We have killed our unborn and called it choice.
We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable.
We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building esteem.
We have abused power and called it political savvy.
We have coveted our neighbors’ possessions and called it ambition.
We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression.
We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment.
Search us O God and know our hearts today; try us and see if there be some wicked way in us; cleanse us from every sin and set us free.
Guide and bless these men and women who have been sent here by the people of Kansas, and who have been ordained by you, to govern this great state.
Grant them your wisdom to rule and may their decisions direct us to the center of your will.
I ask it in the name of your son, the living Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

It would, of course, be lovely to hope that such a prayer might ever have been prayed Rev. Jeremiah Wright, not just Rev. Joe Wright.

What’s sad is that this is not a partisan prayer.  Some of the items in it might easily be applied to the Right as well as the Left.  But in it’s Kansas legislature appearance, it was Democrats who got up and walked out.

Alas.

Aug 05 2009

The Next Great Awakening, Part 8: The Responsibility of the Church

Category: church,religion,society — harmonicminer @ 8:02 am

Frank Turek lays the blame for many ills in our society at the feet of the church for not being what it was supposed to be, or doing what it was supposed to do. His closing paragraphs (all worth reading):

So if you’re a believer who is upset that life is not being protected; that marriage is being subverted; that judges routinely usurp your will; that our immigration laws are being ignored; that radical laws are passed but never read; that mentioning God in school (unless he’s Allah) results in lawsuits; that school curriculums promote political correctness and sexual deviance as students fail at basic academics; that unimaginable debt is being piled on your children while leftist organizations like Planned Parenthood and ACORN receive your tax dollars; and that your religion and free speech rights are about to be eroded by “hate” crimes legislation that can punish you for quoting the Bible; then go look in the mirror and take your share of the blame because we have not obeyed our calling.

Then start over. Reengage at every level of society. Treat every job and every person as sacred. Be a beacon for Christ and truth in whatever you do and wherever you are. There is hope if you act. After all, we believe in redemption.

Shall we accept the indictment?  It depends.  If you know that YOU’VE been doing what you can to move culture in a better direction, so be it.  But we do have a very large problem.  Too many of our “para-church” organizations have desired respectability in secular eyes more than they’ve desired to be God’s agents in the world…  and they can’t have it both ways.  Sadly, this is true for educational institutions, community organizations, charitable organizations, you name it.  And, even more sadly, some churches have watered down their message and diffused their focus in the name of appearing more tolerant and accepting.

In a word, sometimes we have let the secular left make the rules, and have tried too hard to play their game, instead of playing our own game according to God’s rules.

Each of us is responsible first to God, then to our families, to the church, and then to the wider organizations of which we’re a part, and to society.  Given that hierarchy, it’s pretty safe to say that those of us who are lionized by society would do very, very well to examine ourselves individually, to ask if we’re really God’s person in the world, or just using God-talk as a means of pursuing essentially secular objectives that are respectable to the world even without the God-talk.

As the church, if we don’t take strong, united stands against clear, unambiguous sin, we abdicate one of our chief responsibilities to God and society.  If we don’t do it, who will?

Jul 30 2009

The Left At Christian Universities, Part 13: Infiltrating, or enabling?

Category: abortion,Catholic,church,higher education,left,religion,society — harmonicminer @ 8:24 am

The previous post in this series is here.

From the Cardinal Newman Society

A national Catholic higher education organization has identified 10 Catholic colleges and universities that are promoting student internships with organizations whose missions or activities are directly opposed to the moral teachings of the Catholic Church, including on fundamental issues such as abortion and marriage.

“This discovery validates the concerns of so many thousands of faithful Catholic parents and students, that public scandals at Catholic colleges are just the tip of the iceberg,” said Patrick J. Reilly, President of The Cardinal Newman Society. “Under what definition of ‘Catholic education’ do students receive academic credit to work for leading pro-abortion organizations?”

Last week, CNS wrote to the presidents of these colleges and universities to inform them of the problems with their internship programs. None have yet indicated that they will take steps to remedy the problems.

The internship programs—along with concerns about theological dissent, weakening academic standards and declining campus culture at many Catholic colleges and universities—help explain why most students and recent graduates of Catholic institutions believe that abortion and gay marriage should be legal, despite the Church’s clear teachings to the contrary. That was one of the disturbing findings of a November 2008 study published by the CNS Center for the Study of Catholic Higher Education and titled “Behaviors and Beliefs of Current and Recent Students at U.S. Catholic Colleges.”

This is not only a Catholic problem, of course.  Many evangelical colleges and universities bring speakers to their campuses who undermine the central missions of the institutions, as well as encouraging student participation in organizations that support pro-abortion and anti-family public policy.   Certainly, there will be times when a “professional internship” may require a student to participate in or with an organization whose ethos is questionable in these matters.  (Student teaching comes to mind.  The NEA is pro-abortion and anti-family through and through, and indirectly controls a great deal of American public education.)  But there seems to be an unfortunate pattern at some Christian colleges and universities of encouraging student participation in essentially leftist organizations promoting socialism, abortion-on-demand, leftist public and foreign policy, etc., such as CLUE, Progressive Christians Uniting, NAACP, Faith Voices for the Common Good, etc.  Such organizations may even be invited to campus to recruit students with week-long workshops.

Some of these organizations take moral stances at odds with Christian tradition, but may nevertheless do some good work.  Even Hamas hands out food and clothing in Gaza.  Not that these are “terrorist organizations” (although Progressive Christians Uniting seems quite fond of CAIR, which is a HAMAS supporter), but the point is that “doing good” is not a sufficient cause to place students with organizations that support evils like abortion and the destruction of the traditional family, or simply deafeningly bad ideas like socialism and pacifism, which generally lead to evil down the road.

At a minimum, if Christian universities/colleges are going to place students in internships with left-wing groups such as these, part of the “critical thinking and evaluation” exercises surrounding the intership should involve challenging the underlying assumptions and associations of the groups where students are placed.

Christianity is not distilled essence of leftism with scripture quotations.  The book of Luke is not a license for the government to play the role of Robin Hood, even if “red-letter-Christians” might wish otherwise.  And our failure as a society to protect the unborn remains the single biggest moral divide in our nation, much as slavery was 200 years ago, even if “enlightened evangelicals” are embarrassed to stand up against abortion-on-demand, when the cost is the good regard of the secular world with which they want to be friends.

If an organization passes out food to the hungry, and then supports politicians and policies that promote easy access to abortion, exactly what is that organization’s moral status?

Before we place our students with organizations whose values are divergent from Christian tradition (regardless of the religious clothing these organizations may wear), we’d better seriously consider what other options we have, and we’d better be certain we have prepared those students with sufficient intellectual and spiritual armor to resist the values-bending pressures they’ll have to endure.

There is a followup to this post here, about CLUE and the agenda they pursue.

H/T:  Christiansagainstleftistheresy

The next post in this series is here.

« Previous Page — Next Page »