Tuesday, June 28, 2011

God's Math

Mark 10:1-9

1  Getting up, He went from there to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan; crowds gathered around Him again, and, according to His custom, He once more began to teach them.
2  Some Pharisees came up to Jesus, testing Him, and began to question Him whether it was lawful for a man to divorce a wife. 3  And He answered and said to them, "What did Moses command you?" 4  They said, "Moses permitted a man TO WRITE A CERTIFICATE OF DIVORCE AND SEND her AWAY." 5  But Jesus said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. 6  "But from the beginning of creation, God MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE. 7  "FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER, 8  AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH; so they are no longer two, but one flesh.

9  "What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate."
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As my wife and I approach our eleventh (11th) anniversary, I am reminded that in God's marriage math, 1 + 1 = 1. Too often I take this for granted in a culture that, one, does not honor marriage between a man and a woman quite the same as He does; two, sees couples primarily as indivuals who are interdependent from a systematic and functional viewpoint; and three, misunderstands God's primary plan for the roles of husband and wife in the context of oneness. This is a context of love: a covenant and not a contract. Contracts carry stipulations and limits responsibility. Covenants establish agreements entered into voluntarily by two parties that identify and affirm their relationship one to another and acknowledge their binding, loving commitment one to another, even if one party member fails to keep it. From this viewpoint, my wife and I can celebrate the oneness we share, despite the differences, despite the disappointments, despite the despair because the covenant is one of love unconditional and not just a partnership of equals. The new math of marriage does not compute and too often ends with irreconciliable differences. The old math works just fine if husbands and wives affirm God's creative model for exemplifying His ideal relationship between Himself and His people. Under the blood, a Redeeming God plus humbled people is always equal to ONE.

Sunday, June 26, 2011

The Law-Abiding Citizen

The Law-Giver has declared that none abides by the Law He provided humanity. Instead, he continuously breaks it. When it came to the relationship between humanity and God's righteous decree, we were outlaws. Then the Law-Abider stepped in, fulfilling all righteousness on the law-breakers' behalf. We were two thieves on a cross: venomous, vile, rebellious. The third Man was the Son of Man: innocent, scapegoated, broken for us. He took our due punishment upon Himself, as one who didn't break the law, and bore our own iniquities.

The sign on the post read "INRI," which in Aramaic was translated KING OF THE JEWS. It hung above the Law-Abider's thorn-crowned head. One thief continued to hurl insults at the on-lookers. He also taunted the KING to come down from the cross if He was truly the Son of God. However the other, penitent in heart, defended the God-Man before the crowd. The outlaw turned with somber eyes to the KING and inquired of Him, "Will you remember me when you enter your kingdom?" Jesus, eyes swollen shut and face beating unrecognizable, assured him, "Today, you will be with me in paradise."

Though we ourselves can no more follow perfectly the perfect law of the holy God than a camel can pass through the eye of a needle, Jesus, the Son of Man, the Son of God, the Law-Abider accomplished this. Yet He alone was wounded for our sin, for our lawlessness. Greater still, this one act of sacrificial love made available to all of us an assurance that we would be with Him. If only we'd simply acknowledge our guilt with penitent hearts and believe by faith that Jesus alone atones for our sin. By the power of His resurrection, we who were once thieves now become citizens of an eternal country where none can break in and steal. And the Law-Abider enters into our lives to empower us who stole to steal no more.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

The War Against Girls?

"After decades of fighting for a woman's right to choose the outcome of her own pregnancy, it is difficult to turn around and point out that women are abusing that right."
-Mara Hvistendahl


Just read a thought-provoking review of Mara Hvistendahl's book entitled Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men in The Wall Street Journal. What do you think, and where do you stand?

To read Jonathan V. Last's review, "The War Against Girls," click the link.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Forgiveness: the Great Exchange

The following article is the heart of a message I shared at our large, multi-generational, bi-annual family reunion during the evening banquet in August 2010.
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Edwin Hubbel Chapin, a 19th Century American minister once said, "Never does the human soul appear so strong and noble as when it forgoes revenge and dares to forgive injury."

I posit to you that a family that is rooted and grounded in love; a family that practices unity, is a family that exercises one of the greatest exchanges humankind has ever known: forgiveness.

By inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Apostle Paul writes to those who believe on the name of Jesus in his letter to the Ephesians, "Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, [along] with malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you" (4:31-32). Jesus commanded His disciples to forgive, and by extension commands us to do the same, in the Gospel according to Luke, "Watch yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him. If he repents, forgive him. Even if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times returns to you saying, 'I repent,' you must forgive him." And His disciples said to the Lord, "Increase our faith." So the Lord said, "If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,' and it would obey you" (Luke 17:3-6). No matter how small the faith, God has given us the power to forgive. It is in the forgiving of those who have offended us that we begin the process of healing.

Esau forgave. Joseph forgave. Jesus forgives. The healing of wounded relationships also involve humility on the part of the offender. Jacob humbled himself before Esau, though he tricked him into forsaking his birthright. The children of Israel humbled themselves before Joseph, though they sold him into slavery and considered him dead. And we must humble ourselves before Jesus, though we were still sinners, the sinless Christ having died in our places. For the penalty of sin is death.

Finally, the exchange happens when in humility we are ready to forgive others' offenses; prepared to seek out forgiveness, to admit wrongs, and to confess our own offenses; and ready to accept and provide love, grace, and mercy.

Someone once posited that "time heals all wounds." I declare to you that time alone heals nothing. Some wounds cut deep, leaving the offended damaged, maimed, disabled, even dead: lacking trust, bearing trauma, emotionally shipwrecked.

Rose Kennedy, the matron of the famed Kennedy political dynasty and mother of both John F. And Robert Kennedy, did not agree either. Knowing the pain of losing three sons, she once said, "The wounds remain. In time, the mind, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue, and the pain lessens. But it is never gone."

Our family is not the church, for the church is the body of Christ. We are members one to another if Christ dwells in us, members of a new family with brothers and sisters whose sin is forgiven. And His love covers a multitude of sin. When we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for us who were ungodly. He was wounded for our iniquities. See the nail prints is His hands and feet? The scar on His side? God demonstrated His own love towards us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. The great exchange is life on life. We rejoice because those who are Christ's have now received reconciliation. And we too can be reconciled one to another.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

On the False Belief that Jobs Are the Solution to Spiritual Deficits

Jobs will not fix problems brought on by spiritual deficits. Corruption still takes place in the work place, no matter where one finds himself in the employment totem pole. Though unemployment and the crime rate are high and jobs are needed, the issue for those whose lives "run amuck" is one of the heart. Change the heart and its attitudes, then changes in the man and in his behavior will occur. If I simply change the environment without changing the heart, then I'm only using a band-aid to fix mortal wounds. The bleeding is internal.

By believing that jobs are the solution to fixing criminal behavior by black youths is to assume that all young, unemployed African Americans are at their best subject to criminal behavior and activiy. That's simply not true. We should all work hard to ensure that opportunities toward successful transition into adulthood are accessible to our youth in the city. And there's a wide range of programs, free and fee-based, that help address transition. These programs and opportunites could perhaps aid in temporarily alleviating dysfunction, but all in all, if the deep-ceded, spiritual and moral deficits remain without progressive or immediate changes of the heart, then they've "missed the mark."

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

The Lawless and the City

1 John 3:4 - Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness.

Matthew 24:12 - "Because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will grow cold."

Romans 4:7,8 - [7] "BLESSED ARE THOSE WHOSE LAWLESS DEEDS HAVE BEEN FORGIVEN,
AND WHOSE SINS HAVE BEEN COVERED. [8] BLESSED IS THE MAN WHOSE SIN THE LORD WILL NOT TAKE INTO ACCOUNT."
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God ordains local authorities to serve and protect its citizens as well as to enforce laws. Although the Law-Giver condemns abuse of power and those who practice injustice, he is NOT in the business of condoning all-out anarchy, or in other words, lawlessness. That said, I am angry about recent incidents in the city; incidents that Chicago police and local news agencies have called "flash mobs," where large groups of young people commit random acts of violence upon unsuspecting "law-abiding" citizens in outdoor locales near or along Lake Shore Dr. I hate to write it this way (and many might say, "Then don't write it"), but these thug, teenaged, thrillseekers are terrorizing people who never accepted the invitation to terror. And unfortunately I have to report (and some may say, "You don't HAVE to") that sadly most of these young people are African American and male. Sadder still is that a few of them have been as young as thirteen years old.

Now I would be naïve to say of such a phenomenon like this, "It is what it is," shrugging it off with nonchalance. As an African American writer, I would be naïve to defend mob action by a few groups of black youths with a veil of excuses (many that enable rather than empower) that point out lacks of opportunity toward transition to productive adulthood. However, someone else's civil liberties have been violated, and the victims have the potential to be as ethnically diverse as is Devon Avenue. These youths' crimes are targeted, yet colorblind. But the violence only further perpetuates the deep-ceded stereotypes of black youths being violent and having no regard for the law; and it gives more fodder for the careless or perhaps racist writers, pundits, spin doctors, and commentators to fuel more fear on top of the terror that seems to already reign on the Magnificent Mile, in the Gold Coast, in Lake View, and mind you, in Englewood where violent crime is never new. But that never makes it right. These writers might write, "Take that back to the South Side. It doesn't belong here." But does violent crime and "lawlessness" ever really BELONG anywhere?

I read a quote in the Red Eye from a heart-broken father about the death of his son, and essentially it went like this: "The police got scared, they over-reacted, and they killed my son;" this in relationship to another recent incident where a teen confronted police after being ordered to drop what was in his hand. It was dark, the youth had reached for the object as he made charge, and, according to Chicago Police, had been warned. An officer shot him dead. The object: a cellphone. In our own disobedience when confronted by God about our own lawlessness, we only kill ourselves because we falsely believe that we can save ourselves from His sovereign presence and authority. We make excuses for our own lawlessness rather than own up, "I was scared, I overreacted, and now I killed myself for disobeying the righteous commandment."

All of us, humanity, by nature practice lawlessness because lawlessness is sin. "All have sinned and fallen short of God's glory;" have never met his standard of righteousness (Romans 3:23). Sin has never truly BELONGED. It was never truly God's intention for sinful man to remain sinful, but to renounce sin and be reconciled unto Him. This reconciliation is found through the blood of His Son Jesus who bore our sin and lawlessness and nailed them to a tree. Thieves, like the "flash-mob," only come to steal, to kill, and to destroy. However, Jesus came that we may have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10). And yes, this promise is for everyone, including the thug, teenaged thrillseeker whose lawlessness is just as evident before man and media as our lawlessness is before a holy and righteous God.