Who’s the bigot?

Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary Definition:

a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices ; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance

I hear this term thrown around quite a bit nowadays.  Especially after the voters passed Proposition 8 in California and now with Obama asking Rick Warren to give the inaugural prayer.

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Faith and Doubts

If you are a believer in Jesus, do you ever doubt your faith?  If you doubt, does that mean you don’t really have a saving faith or that your faith is weak?

I’ve had this discussion a couple of times with my ten year-old son.  He has been raised in a Christian home.  He accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior when he was five.  This is young, but he has always been a very thoughtful boy and he was serious about this decision.  It was my blessing to be able to baptize him and a couple of years later his younger sister.

Now that my son is older, he’s thinking more about his faith and what he believes.  Some things in the bible sound a little far out.  Once you learn that Santa Claus is just a nice story, you start to question other stories you’ve been taught, even ones you’re taught in church.  So one night my son comes to me, with tears in his eyes, wondering if he can really be a Christian if he has these doubts.

I told my son, if he has doubts, he needs to seek out answers.  Like I said, my son is a very thoughtful young man.  I had to answer questions like,

Why did God create Satan if he knew he would rebel and be evil?

If I am saved and have the Holy Spirit in me, why do I still lose my patience with my little brothers and sisters and do mean things to them?

These are just a couple samplings.  I thank God for His Spirit to help me as a field these tough questions.  Amazingly enough, these types of questions will often come after I have studied a similar topic or listened to a teacherpreacher like John Piper talk about them.  I don’t always give a great answer.  Piper makes answers to these types of questions seem so logical but they are much tougher when talking about them with your ten year-old son.

However, the best answer I gave my son was to take his doubts to God.  Read his bible, pray, but most importantly, remember what he knows to be true.  He has some great anchors of God working in his life to hold on to.  I wrote about one of these experiences this past spring.

My son is working out his faith.  He is so much further ahead of me than where I was at his age, in some ways, further than I am now.  It’s scary for a father to watch his son work through his doubts?  What if he chooses not to believe?  All I can do is love him, teach him, lead by example, and be honest when I fail in my own faith.  God has to do the rest.  My son’s faith is ultimately between him and God.

I was inspired to write this post because of a story I read about a man that has lost his faith.  You can read Dan’s story here.  I don’t believe anyone can snatch any believer from Jesus (John 10:28-29).  When I read Dan’s story, it sure sounds like Dan had a saving faith, so how could he have lost it?  I don’t know.  I don’t know what was really in Dan’s heart before and I don’t know what is really there now.  Was he never really saved?  Or is he just now in a dark valley where he will eventually emerge more confident than ever in his faith?

That’s not the point of Dan’s story.  The point is how he claims his wife and his pastor have responded to his story.  The response he describes is tragic and it’s not how Jesus would call us to respond.  I’m not assuming Dan’s story is true and I’m not assuming it’s false.  I don’t personally know any of those involved.  However, it is a story we all need to pray about.

Pray for Dan and that while he believes he has turned his back on Jesus, that he learns that Jesus will never turn his back on him.

Pray for Dan’s wife and their children.  Whether these accusations are true or false and whether Dan ever comes back to the Lord or not, this experience their family is suffering through is heart wrenching.

Pray for Dan’s church and community, for those that know Christ can respond in love and those that do not know Jesus will see a response in love where it appears love has been lacking.

Pray for yourself and your family.  Pray that God will give you the faith and wisdom to not fear your doubts but to embrace your doubts as you work out your faith and seek Him who promises to answer (Luke 11:9-10).

Why I’m still on the right

In many elections it is not surprising how people vote.  There are usually one or two key issues that people cling to and that sets their political mind set.  There is nothing wrong with that.  The reality is that there are so many issues with no real right or wrong  perspective that very few of us can all agree on every issue.  That’s why our party specific primary elections can often be divisive.

In past elections, many Christians have tended to vote more conservatively because in general (not in all cases) the conservative platforms include moral positions that more align with a biblical perspective.  However, I have noticed a shift in that thinking among some Christians.  It’s not a shift away from biblical perspectives but more a shift in which biblical perspectives cause more conviction in their political view.

Here’s my attempt of an analysis of this shift and why I haven’t shifted.  I’m going to be speaking in general terms so forgive me if I appear to be using a brush that is too broad.  However, I want to keep this thought process simple.

As mentioned in my previous post, a couple of the major moral political issues today are abortion and government recognition of gay marriages.  These issues have tended to pull Christians to the Republican side of the political spectrum because many Republican candidates take the pro-life and pro-heterosexual marriage platform stance.  There are also other biblical perspective issues such as the sovereignty of Israel but that issue tends to be less divisive across political lines.

Today, I think these two moral political hot topics are starting to take a back seat to another important moral political issue, which is injustice.  Christians see the injustice of the poor and the persecuted and they want justice.  This is an important biblical perspective and valuable morally political issue to address.

This is where the political shift has started to occur for many Christians.  The Republican party is pro-business.  By that I mean it’s overall position is that the market will keep business in check, there needs to be very little if any governmental regulations over business.

The problem is that the goal for most successful businesses is to make a profit.  Greed becomes the god of many corporations.  Success is measured by revenue growth.  This is obviously not a biblical perspective (Matt 6:24, Luke 16:13).  Over the past decade we have seen the results of this greed with the likes of Enron and others.

Another important injustice issue outside of economics is the real issue of prejudice.  The big areas of concern in our country today are racial prejudice and sexual orientation prejudice.  I think prejudice crosses party lines but unfortunately more openly prejudice groups are identified as “on the right” politically.

Christian conservatives are often labeled as prejudice against gay and lesbians because of their belief that the Bible clearly labels this lifestyle as a sin.  Unfortunately, this perspective of this conservative Christian viewpoint is again a stereotype because some Christians address this issue in a non-Christian and hateful manner.

The abortion issue has also started to give way to injustice perspectives.  It is not that Christians that vote for the democratic ticket want to see babies killed.  It’s that the pro-life movement is often perceived as a “persecuting” movement against the woman in crises.

These are the shifts I see in the Christian political perspective.  However, I still find myself on the conservative side of the equation for the reasons to follow.  I may not be seeing these perspectives correctly so if you are a Christian on the more liberal side of the political spectrum, please comment on this post.

I too am very concerned about the injustices in this world.  I believe that as a follower of Jesus I should fight the battle against these injustices.  However, as the title of this post indicates, I have not shifted my political position to the left with some of my brothers and sisters in Christ that have the same passion against injustice as I do.

Why?

Because I do not think that a political party or any government can or will address the injustices in this world.  Jesus never called a political movement to address the injustices of this world.  He called us, His followers, to address the injustices.  When we depend on the government we end up with communism on the left and fascist dictatorships on the right.

You cannot address the injustice of the poor by trying to redistribute the wealth.  The injustice to the poor is the lack of compassion for the poor.   The injustice of the poor will not be addressed until hearts of those with the wealth are changed.

The problem with trying to regulate compassion is that those in power in the government are just as much sinners as those they are trying to regulate.  Why do we have our current financial crises in this country?  We tried to regulate compassion by providing housing for those that could not afford it.  However, those in charge of the program were greedy and sought their own wealth at the expense of the rest of us.

What is a Christian then to do politically?  Give up?  Never.  I believe as Christians we are to engage our world, so that means we have to engage politically.  My dilemma then is how do I choose between worldly (imperfect) ideologies.  I try to keep it simple.

Abortion is wrong.  God ordains life prior to conception (Psalm 139:13-16).  We have no right to terminate a life that God has ordained.  There are lots of deep arguments that could be made about rape and incest victims but that is not the political issue today.  President-elect Obama was quoted saying he would not want his daughters punished with a baby for making a moral mistake.  While this comment was off the cuff and maybe not how he really wanted to state it, that is the real issue.  Abortion is used today to undue a mistake, at the cost of an innocent baby’s life.

As a Christian, I should actively pray and work for the women that find themselves in crises of a pregnancy and no means to support the child as well as pray and work to support those mothers and children when the child is born.  However, I cannot vote for a candidate that supports abortion as an option.

While Jesus never personally addressed the homosexual issue in the Gospels, Paul certainly lists homosexual actions along with other sinful actions (Romans 1:26, 1 Cor 6:9-11) .  Homosexual actions are also directly denounced in the Old Testament  (Leviticus 18:22, 20:13).

As a Christian, I should love my neighbor, including my gay and lesbian neighbors.  I cannot view their sin as any worse than my own sins.  However, I cannot condone their sin anymore than I can condone my own sin.  I cannot agree with a worldly political movement to condone the homosexual lifestyle as normal and God ordained.

As a Christian, I should give freely to those in need.  This is not just tithing to my church but giving wherever there is a need and not just money, but my time and my heart as well.  The government can’t regulate this.  We know from our own welfare system and the socialist policies in many European countries that when the government tries to regulate giving (i.e. redistribution of  wealth) it does not fix poverty but creates dependency on the government.  Dependency on the government leads to an ever increasing size of government.

Christians in corporate America should live out their Christian faith.  They should work hard and voluntarily serve others in need with money and their time.  Government regulation can be a knee-jerk response to corrupt business practices that negatively hurts honest companies and the people that work for those companies.  Corrupt businesses will usually fail on their own in a free market.  In a government regulated market, corruption is protected (i.e. see Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac).

Make no mistake about it.  While Christ’s Kingdom on earth has started, this physical world is still ruled by Satan (Matt 4:8-9, Eph 6:12).  Big government, either or the left or on the right, will never do the work that needs to be done by those that belong to the Kingdom of God.

There will be a government that will one day rule this earth with justice.  However, that ruler is Jesus when he returns.  Until he comes, I need to keep my spiritual passion deep and seek the Kingdom of God and it’s justice, but I need to keep my worldly political perspectives simple, which for me if on on the right of center, rather than on the left.

Finally, once the votes are casts, God’s will be done.  I congratulate President-elect Obama.  I will pray for him and our country and seek God’s Kingdom regardless of which way our country’s political winds blow.

Romans 13:1 (ESV)

¹ Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.

The Question Song

1 Timothy 4:12 (ESV)

¹² Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.

My ten year-old son wrote this song about his internal wrestling with what it means to truly follow Jesus.  I thank God that He has blessed me with a son that has a heart that is seeking Jesus so deeply at such a young age.  I pray God equips me to disciple my children as they seek Him.

Why do I hurt a lot of people?

I know it’s all a sin

But I have to remember, once Jesus was my age

And he never gave in.

Why do I have answers to questions

But I only answer them to me?

And then I see a lot of non-Christians

I don’t know where I should be.

I wanna care

And I want to love

But it’s just so hard to do.

I don’t want to give in

And I don’t want to die

All that I want to do is fly.

I only have one question for God

That if there’s so much trouble on earth

Why in the world would he leave it be

When he can do something.

But I’m afraid

That he just might

Fire that question

Right back at me.

I don’t want to give in

I don’t want to die

I wanna love and care

And I don’t know why.

I have a little voice

That wants me to

It’s asking if I will

And I want to say I do.

I’m getting all confused

If I could say I do

If I should or not

Or if it’s even true.

I think I should stop

And just not do it

Or maybe I’ll keep going

On and on through it.

I just don’t know

If I should go.

Back to Liberia - For now

Genesis 50:20 (ESV)
²⁰ As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.

I don’t know why I was born healthy and have enjoyed a life of physical and material blessings here in America.  I don’t know why Moses Kollie was born in poverty in Liberia.  I don’t know why his mother was killed by rebels when he was only weeks old.  I don’t know why God let Moses lay trapped under his dead mother for a week causing him to live his childhood with a deformed hand.
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