Success: It’s A Hard Life

I’m a fan of the TV show called The Voice. It’s one of the best talent contests out there today, in my opinion. This season there’s a young girl–only sixteen when the show started–who has survived to the top ten. Her coach has repeatedly said he thinks she might be one of the most influential artists in music–not just in her chosen genre.

What a huge accomplishment for one so young–even if she doesn’t end up winning The Voice, it’s a good guess that she’ll have recording contract by the time this season ends. Part of me is happy for her. She seems so genuine, so fresh–no one has told her yet that she needs to get a bit dirty or to lose her girl-next-door look.

But we’ve seen fresh faces before. Britney Spears comes to mind as does Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber. Or how about Lindsay Lohan?

Ms. Lohan was modeling at the age of 3, was featured on a TV soap at 10, and at 11 she starred in her first movie. Six years later, when she was 17, turning 18, her debut studio album was certified platinum. Three years later her legal problems began.

I’ve seen Christian “stars” experience the same kind of meteoric rise to fame and fortune, only to disappear off the radar–as the public learns later, because of private life issues. An affair. Addiction. A crisis of faith.

Of course not all those who have early success fall foul of its rewards, but enough do, it makes me stop and wonder. We have Biblical examples of successful kings and nations who ended up far from God, sometimes alone, even hated by others. It’s hard to fathom, considering that things started out so well.

A good example of this phenomenon is a young rising political star in Jewish history named Joash. He popped into the public spotlight as a hero at age 7. His grandmother had killed all the other heirs to the throne and had seized the reins of power for herself. Unbeknown to her, however, Joash’s aunt smuggled him away. She and her husband, a priest named Jehoiada, raised him and when he turned seven, they held his coronation, with all the right people backing him.

Such a good beginning. An evil, idolatrous woman pulled down from her position of power and brought to justice. And that was only the beginning.

All the people of the land went to the house of Baal, and tore it down; his altars and his images they broke in pieces thoroughly, and killed Mattan the priest of Baal before the altars. And the priest appointed officers over the house of the LORD. (2 Kings 11:18)

Young King Joash led his people into a revival . . . until he didn’t. Despite the fact that Joash restored the temple, when his mentor Jehoiada died, he himself forsook God.

But after the death of Jehoiada the officials of Judah came and bowed down to the king, and the king listened to them. They abandoned the house of the LORD, the God of their fathers, and served the Asherim and the idols (2 Chron. 24:17-18a).

I think this last passage reveals why success for some–or perhaps, for many–leads to a hard life. This king, having experienced success and the accolades of his people, listened to those who came and bowed down to him. In other words, he started believing his own press clippings. He decided he really was as great as they said he was.

As a result, he no longer trusted God, despite the fact that He sent prophets to turn him back. Apparently, as a result of Joash’s idolatry, God brought an end to the success he’d known. One of the prophets–Zechariah, Jehoida’s son–made this clear to him:

Then the Spirit of God came on Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest; and he stood above the people and said to them, “Thus God has said, ‘Why do you transgress the commandments of the LORD and do not prosper? Because you have forsaken the LORD, He has also forsaken you.’ ” (2 Chron. 24:20)

Surely, surely this would be a turning point. I mean, Jehoiada’s son! The man who raised Joash, who brought him to power, who mentored him until his death–Jehoiada’s son!

Well, actually, no. To show how far he’d fallen, Joash had Zechariah stoned to death. At the turn of the year, the Arameans (Syrians) sacked Jerusalem, killed off a number of officials, and carried away a great deal of plunder. Joash’s own servants turned on him then, though he was already sick, and assassinated him.

Quite the end for one who started out with such promise. From Joash’s life, I think a couple things are clear.

1) God gives the breaks. Joash could just as easily have died with his brothers, but he didn’t–and it was not because of anything he did. He was just a baby.

2) God gives the means for success. Jehoiada was beside the young king, advising him. Again, Joash did nothing to bring Jehoiada into his life, but as long as he listened to and followed this man of God, he did great things.

3) Forgetting #1 and #2 leads to a downfall.

Will the downfall always be the kind of crash-and-burn Joash experienced? I don’t think so. For whatever reason, God sees fit to deal with different people differently.

Manasseh, for example, was a young king who came to power at 16 and did horrible things during his lengthy reign. Yet when he experience the kind of military defeat Joash had experienced, Manasseh turned to God–he repented, did a complete turn around, as dramatic for good as Joash’s was for evil.

So is success really the cause of a hard life? The real cause is rejecting God, turning our back on Him, deciding we’ll go it on our own, do it our own way. Whether successful in the eyes of the world or not, there’s a definite shelf life for people with that attitude.

God’s Gift Of Weakness

Western culture does not prize weakness. For that matter, I doubt if Eastern culture prizes weakness either. Generally society rewards the brightest and the best, the strongest and the fastest, the most beautiful and the most gifted. We give A’s to the kids that get the majority of the questions right, not the ones who say, “I don’t know.” We give the big athletic contracts to the players who score the most points, hit for the highest average, win the most games. In other words, we’re not wired to look at weakness as a gift.

That God apparently takes a contrary view is just another evidence that His ways are not our ways.

For My thoughts are not your thoughts
And My ways are not your ways
Declares the Lord
For as the heavens are higher than the earth
So are My ways higher than your ways
And My thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 59:1-2)

But is it true that God prizes weakness? Yes and no. What He prizes is humility.

Over and over in the major and minor books of prophecy, God’s men gave the message that pride was a cause of God’s judgment–whether against Israel or Judah or one of the nations around them.

The Lord GOD has sworn by Himself, the LORD God of hosts has declared:
“I loathe the arrogance of Jacob,
And detest his citadels;
Therefore I will deliver up the city and all it contains.” (Amos 6:9)

God’s great passion throughout the Bible is to be known. Consequently He brought famine to show that He controls nature; He brought war to show that He provides or withdraws security. Why? Because people who were well fed and safe began to take credit for creating a world that gave them what they needed and wanted. In other words, they stole God’s glory by their pride.

Something else God prizes–the eternal over the temporal. He tells us to store up treasure in heaven where moth and rust can’t get it. The picture is treasure that lasts versus treasure that must inevitably fade away.

Consequently, God is more concerned with our character than our bank account. When Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell all he had, it was because Jesus wanted the young man to yield himself completely. The guy’s love of his money was standing in the way of a whole-hearted commitment to Jesus.

Which brings us back to the main topic. When we are strong, we keep fighting. We think we can still win. We believe in ourselves, believe we can come back from a deficit, that we can make it.

When we are weak, however, we have two options: give up or give in. We can quit and some people do that, or we can give up–we can tell God He’s right, we’re wrong, He’s holy and we’re sinful, He’s perfect and we’re imperfect. When we give in, we say, we can’t make life work the way we want because we’re too weak, so we’re willing to let God make life work the way He wants.

Our weakness, in other words, presses us to God’s side. We are forced to cling to Him or let go because our grip isn’t strong enough. But there’s no better place, no safer place, no place more beneficial than at the feet of Jesus.

By showing us our weakness, by leaving us weak when we ask Him to make us strong, God gives us the greatest gift apart from His Son. He gives us an awareness of our need for Him.

But as I mentioned, we have the option of giving up when we see our weakness. We can choose from the stubbornness of our hearts to “go down with the ship” rather than to yield control to God. Then, at least, we think, we can say, “I did it my way,” as if that’s some sort of victory.

My way, which leads to destruction, or God’s way which leads to salvation. I wonder which one is real victory?

And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor. 12:9-10)

Bilbo’s Ring

I finished The Hobbit last night, so you can give a sigh of relief–my fantasy/Bible analogy posts will likely taper off now.

Towards the end of the book I was reminded of a reaction I had to The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One of The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien, the first time I read it. For one thing, I was disappointed that Bilbo was only a secondary character. As significant, I didn’t like that the Ring was evil.

In The Hobbit the Ring gave Bilbo a decided advantage over his enemies. He used it to escape goblins, to lure the spiders away from the captive dwarfs, to get his friends out of the elvenking’s dungeon, to sneak into the dragon’s lair, and to stay alive during the War of Five Armies.

The Ring’s main property was to make Bilbo invisible, and he used it as often as needed, which you can see, was pretty often. With the edge it gave him, he did heroic, selfless deeds. He appeared courageous and wise to the dwarfs with whom he shared his adventure.

How, then, could Tolkien turn something so good, so ennobling into something dangerous, destructive, and evil?

I remember time and again, as I read The Fellowship of the Ring, thinking Frodo should use the Ring even though Gandalf told him above all to avoid putting it on.

I liked the Ring and the power it gave Bilbo.

For Frodo, though, the Ring was a burden, a danger. It exposed him to the evil lord, it became an obsession, it weighed him down, and in the end, it mastered him.

How could the same object be so different in the two books?

By the time I reached the end of the third book in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Return of the King, I had forgotten my initial thoughts about the Ring. I saw it as a metaphor for sin and Frodo as a type of Christ–one of several in the books.

Sin, after all, is a lure, a destructive power that only The Sin-Bearer could carry away–in the same way that the scapegoat carried away the sins of the nation Israel once a year. Only our Sin Bearer did so once for all.

But I was reading The Hobbit, remember. And this time, I’m aware that the Ring, though giving an advantage to Bilbo, will be the pivotal object for all of Middle Earth. I’m reading, watching for any hint of what is to come. And there is none.

Bilbo had no clue that the Ring had any adverse effects. Out of his ignorance, he used it at will. None of the dwarfs, nor the wizard Gandalf, showed any sign that Bilbo might be onto something that could harm him.

And then it hit me–that’s also like sin. Generally sin is attractive–it’s the tasty food of Egypt instead of the meager fare in the wilderness. It looks good. It seems like the answer to a need. It might even “work” a time or two or fifteen. In other words, our sin gets us what we want. Which makes it harder to think that the thing we’ve grown to love, our own dear precious, needs to be left at the foot of the cross and done away with forever.

Lies And Corruption

It’s not a happy fact that people lie and even less so that those who purport to be leaders do so. In SoCal we are suffering through yet one more scandal involving government officials. This one concerns someone in the L.A. County assessor’s office who took bribes to lower the value of high-end property, costing the government more than a million dollars in lost property tax revenue.

Various cities have indicted their manager or mayor or council members recently because a close look at the financials shows shady doings. Even the Mayor of Los Angeles was caught taking perks such as tickets to high-profile events which he supposedly was attending in an official capacity. As I recall, he ended up paying for the tickets, and all charges were dropped. This is the mayor who had an affair with a news anchor that cost him his marriage.

Ah, yes, lies and corruption.

But here’s the thing. On our ballot are two propositions to raise our taxes. Governor Jerry Brown has said that if we don’t raise taxes–Prop 30 which he favors would raise state income tax for those making more than $250,000 AND sales tax for all of us–then there will be big cuts in education. No cuts, apparently, to the boondoggle bullet train that is supposed to run from LA to San Francisco and is already over budget.

The thing is, we’ve been down this road before. Years ago, the ballot initiative passed ushering in a state lottery which would solve all the funding problems for our public schools. We’ve passed school bond measures and increased our gas tax so that our schools will be guaranteed the money they need. And yet, somehow, we still are spending less per child than most of the 50 states, and our governor is threatening education cuts unless we agree to tax ourselves. Again.

Where will it end, I wonder. Government that proves to be top heavy, tangled in red tap, ineffective, and at a growing rate, corrupt, wants more of its citizens’ money to keep doing what it’s doing–or it will make the children pay.

Sadly we can’t say we’re being taxed without representation. After all, this is our choice. But we’re being talked into buying swamp land by politicians who want to keep their pensions, keep their high pay checks, and keep their positions of influence.

Did I mention that the tax assessor who is in jail is still collecting his salary, and will continue to do so even if he is found guilty–unless he resigns or is recalled. Well, at least that law will change at the end of this year. But we have a ways to go to get rid of the lies and corruption that seem on the rise in our various governments.

I’m hoping California starts by voting No to these tax increase propositions.

Eve’s Way or Adam’s

In discussing people who profess Christ but who don’t actually know Him in yesterday’s post, “But Lord, Lord …,” I posed a question early on: Are they lying?

I thought about that some more and have come to the realization that there are two ways to sin: Eve’s way and Adam’s.

According to Scripture, Eve was deceived. She herself reported this to God:

Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” And the woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” (Gen. 3:13)

But the New Testament agreed with her. Paul alluded to her being deluded when he wrote to the Corinthian church

But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. (2 Cor. 11:3)

He was more pointed in his remarks to Timothy:

And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression. (1 Tim. 2:14)

A quick look at the Genesis account shows Eve talking with Satan in the guise of a serpent. The tempter took a tack he still uses today: “Indeed, has God said …”

On Eve’s behalf, unless God repeated the command, He gave His “don’t eat” warning to Adam:

The LORD God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” (Gen 2:16-17)

So yes, God commanded the man, before He’d even created the woman.

Could it be that the Fall was nothing more than a communication problem? That men and women didn’t know how to talk to each other even then?

Well, no. Eve clearly repeated God’s command to Satan in response to his question. Has God really said … Yes, here’s what He said. When she concluded by conveying the consequences of disobedience, Satan countered by saying, “You surely will not die!” In fact, he continued, if you eat of the tree you’ll actually be like God.

So what was Eve thinking? She was deceived, deluded. In other words she didn’t make a conscious decision to disobey. She made an unconscious one. She decided, without realizing she was doing it, that God was not to be trusted, that what she wanted was more important than what He said.

She didn’t purposefully set out to rebel against God. Rather, she thought she was getting more reliable information than what she’d had before.

Remember, unless God repeated His command, she got that information from Adam. I’ve often wondered why Eve would believe Satan over God. The truth is, being deluded as she was, she didn’t think she was disbelieving God. She thought she was now operating on more knowledge than what she’d had before.

Adam’s was a different story. God told him directly what he could and could not eat. He had no misconception. Satan wasn’t pulling the “has God really said” trick on him. But Adam ate anyway. What was he thinking?

I can’t believe he hated God or determined to be His enemy. But that’s where he ended up. In essence he said, I understand God told me not to eat, but I’m going to anyway. Eyes open, he did want he wanted rather than what God wanted.

Scripture doesn’t say this, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to believe that the man who had no other fitting companion among all of creation, didn’t want to lose the one person that was the perfect helpmate for him. If it’s true he took that stand, then he didn’t trust God to provide for him in light of Eve’s sin as He had since the day He put Adam on earth.

One way or the other, Adam walked into sin with his eyes open whereas Eve did so in a haze of delusion.

The important thing is that they both died. The consequence of their sin, while carrying some slight differences, in the end was one they shared–the one God warned them against, the one Satan called into question.

Here we are today, with Satan still saying loud and louder, Has God really said … Surely, NOT!

If he can delude people into thinking they’re getting some new piece of information from better scholarship, he’s fine with that. Or if he can get them to say, I know what God says, but I’m going to do what I want anyway, Satan is fine with that.

A deluded heart or open rebellion–Eve’s way or Adam’s? The means may be different, but their end is the same.

Telling People They’re Good

Some time not long ago Western society started lying to kids. You can do ANYTHING, parents and teachers and coaches and TV stars and sports figures all say in unison. ANYTHING. Except that isn’t true.

Case in point. When I was coaching, I had a seventh grade girl who made the basketball team as an “understudy”–a player who would practice with the team, sit on the bench during games, but who would not play. This particular girl hadn’t played before, so had no bad habits to break. What’s more, she was sharp, attentive, and willing to work. But she was also slow and weak and not particularly quick.

Nevertheless, all her hard work earned her a spot on the team the following year. In fact when she went into high school, she made the freshman team of her fairly large public school, all because she had great fundamentals. But she still wasn’t fast or quick or strong. No matter how much that girl may have wanted to play pro basketball or make the Olympics (I have no reason to believe she wanted either) that was never going to happen. Never.

Her story repeats itself time and time again, and yet all these parents and teachers and coaches and TV stars and sports figures continue to lie to kids.

What bothers me so much is that at the same time, those influential people are missing what kids really need to hear: the truth. They need to hear what they need to improve and they need to hear what they do well.

I wrote a post today over at Spec Faith about writing reviews. I’m a big believer that we need to be balanced in what we say about books–and that would apply to movies, too, or songs, or people.

Yes, people.

We are all a mixed bag. We were created in God’s image, with a sin nature. How much more mixed can we get? We have talents and character strengths and physical prowess and mental capacity. A lot of that is wired in our DNA. We did nothing to make ourselves as tall as we are or as creative or adventurous. We have those things because God gave them to us.

At the same time, we are prideful, lazy, greedy, selfish, vengeful, dishonest, and a host of other things–not stuff we had to learn, but stuff that is innately ours as sin baggage we’re born with.

How great, then, if the influences in our lives told the truth about us. Things like, You are such a gifted athlete, but your pride will stop you cold from ever being a good teammate.

I’m not sure people need to hear both sides of the equation at the same time, but hear it, they should.

Also over at Spec Faith, I ran a writing challenge, and one of those posting an entry remarked that the environment created by commenters as they gave feedback was positive and encouraging. I honestly hadn’t thought about it until he mentioned it, but he was right.

Good, I thought. Writers get bad news ALL the time–rejections from agents, contest entries that don’t place, critiques from partners pointing out what needs to improve. All of that is fine and legitimate and part of the process of learning and improving.

But what happened to telling people what’s good? We learn that way, too. Peter in his first epistle points to Christ and His suffering on our behalf and says, that’s the way to do it. He didn’t sin, didn’t lie, didn’t hurl invectives back at those who jeered Him, didn’t threaten payback while he was suffering. That’s the way to live, Peter says.

Paul does the same kind of thing with the Thessalonians. You’re doing well, he says, but now excel still more.

Maybe it’s time for us to start telling the truth to each other, not just to our kids. We can’t do everything. But what we do well, shouldn’t we tell each other? Shouldn’t we be happy to sing the praises of those in our lives when they show kindness or work hard on their job or pick up their socks? Sometimes I think we’re waiting for great things. But maybe we need to mention the every day things, then at the appropriate moment let them know they can excel still more.

I have my suspicions that telling people they are good at filing or being on time or taking out the trash without being reminded will go a lot farther than telling them they can do anything.

The “S” Word

Western culture doesn’t talk about sin anymore, or at least not much and rarely outside the doors of a church. The concept rankles our society—steeped as it is in the belief that Mankind is basically good.

Christians, while giving intellectual ascent to the problem of sin, live very much like everyone else. We say things like “an innocent child” and “he didn’t deserve to die,” as if sin didn’t somehow pollute babies and death wasn’t the end result of sin as God said it would be.

From time to time I used to watch one of those “reality” TV programs called “Super Nanny.” The premise was, a family with out-of-control kids contacted the show asking for help. In essence, they needed a crash course in child rearing. And truly, the families they that went on the show were in crisis. In the worst cases, the children were completely in charge. Sadly, some of these little ones were pre-school age–four and under. And yet they would fight each other and often hit and scratch and curse at their parent. How does this happen unless children have innate pride and selfishness and greed and deception and rebellion?

Some time ago Alistair Begg aired a sermon from the book of Proverbs about child rearing. Interestingly, he said the chief problem for today’s parents is their theology. They don’t realize that the oh-so-cute little bundle they brought home from the hospital is a monster.

He’s right. How we discipline someone who is good would be vastly different from how we would discipline someone who is inherently sinful–who is determined to please himself, promote himself, and control everyone else.

Truthfully, our belief in sin is as fundamental as our belief in God because it is sin that separates us from Him.

Behold, the LORD’S hand is not so short
That it cannot save;
Nor is His ear so dull
That it cannot hear.
But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God,
And your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear. (Isaiah 59:1-2)

If we have no sin problem, then God would seem irrational or mean or non-existent. But the fact is, God remains inaccessible to us because of sin. It mars us, soiling us to the point that we cannot have fellowship with Him. Sin creates a breach between us and Him. A breach no one can cross except the Sinless One.

Again, in contrast to popular thought, Christ did not come to show us how to live sinless lives like His. He came because we cannot live sinless lives. He came to give us new life, to create clean hearts, to eradicate our sin problem.

So no wonder the world doesn’t get Jesus. If there is no sinful man, only good people led astray by society or damaged at an early age, then why would anyone need Jesus? We’d need a better social structure, more equitable laws. But God? Belief in Him is divisive and what we want is a society that fosters peace and harmony. Better if belief in God goes the way of belief in sin.

Except, wishing sin didn’t exist, pretending God doesn’t exist, will not change reality. Man is sinful and in need of God alone who can save us.

This article originally appeared here at A Christian Worldview of Fiction in June 2008.

Thoughts On President Obama’s Evolving View Of Marriage

Yesterday, in the wake of North Carolina passing a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman, and amidst his plans to attend Hollywood fund raisers, President Obama declared that his evolving views on marriage now lead him to believe that same-sex partners should be allowed to marry.

My thoughts about these developments in the US culture will be somewhat rambling because I haven’t had time to process everything into a cohesive whole. So as they come to me:

Words. Words matter. Yes, definitions evolve over time, but not because someone imposes a new definition from without. In the case of marriage, thirty of the fifty states — thirty-one, if the courts hadn’t gotten involved in California — have passed laws or amendments (we passed both) defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman. In fact, every time the issue has gone before the electorate, the people have voted for the traditional definition of marriage. The only states in which same-sex marriage is legal, legislatures (and perhaps the courts?) have dictated it.

The fact that we need the qualifier, “same-sex,” shows that in the minds of those discussing marriage, there’s a distinction between marriage and same-sex marriage.

Learning from children. In explaining his new position, President Obama said he believes it is a generational thing. His daughters have friends whose parents are same-sex partners and they think nothing of it. Since when did adults surrender standards of right and wrong to our children? If President Obama’s daughters thought nothing of teens street racing, would his view on that subject evolve?

Relativism. The concept of evolving views of right and wrong fits so perfectly into postmodern relativism, so I’m not surprised at the President’s shifting opinion. (I have to admit, I’m also cynical enough to wonder whether or not Mr. Obama didn’t want to insure that the big donors in Hollywood would be liberal in the amount they give to his campaign. But that’s a side issue.)

Relativism basically says there is no moral standard other than the one a particular group of people agrees upon at any set time. Hence, in this day and age of equal rights and tolerance, those values trump all else. Except when it doesn’t.

According to a relativistic way of thinking, countries that permit sweatshops should not be flagged for human rights violations because there really are no such things as human rights. Who gives humans any rights?

I suspect that’s where Western culture is headed, but it’s not there just yet.

Evolving Definition of Marriage. If a societal institution like marriage can be redefined once, why not twice, three times, or as many times as we want? So in five years (or sooner), someone will want marriage to include a man and multiple wives or a woman and multiple husbands. Why not a man and his dog? Or how about a man or woman and a consenting child? Who is to say that these can’t also be considered marriage if marriage becomes a fluid term?

Marriage and Sin. I’m always dismayed when I hear Christians talk about homosexuality as if it is the unpardonable sin. The truth is, the Hollywood movie stars so many people revere, or many of the sports figures who get caught up in the celebrity lifestyle, engage in “fleshly lusts.” Meaning, homosexual individuals are not in a special class. All of us, homosexuals or straight, have gone astray. We all stand in need of forgiveness and redemption.

Homosexuality does not make a person sinful. A sinful person chooses to sin and that might take a wide variety of forms. Is a person more sinful if they cheat on their income taxes or sleep around or engage in homosexual behavior? Answer: there is no “more sinful.”

There might be more consequences, but the one issue each person must resolve is what do they do with Christ? Is He the very cornerstone of their faith or is He a “stone of stumbling and a rock of offense”?

The Distraction of President Obama’s Declaration. All the discussion of President Obama as the first President in favor of same-sex marriage (as if this was an issue thirty years ago, or even twenty) has taken the focus off some other critical developments.

In California, for example, there’s a bill in the Senate that would would ban children under 18 from undergoing “sexual orientation change efforts.” (You can read about it here.) In other words, parents could not seek help from a professional for their children in an effort to steer them away from homosexuality. Would the parents themselves be unable to counsel their children in this way? It’s a frightening thought, but most people aren’t talking about it because they’re talking about Mr. Obama’s evolving opinion.

There’s also a courageous man in China who stood against forced abortion and has sought asylum in the US. What are we hearing about his situation?

Unfortunately, the President seized the bully pulpit (what a politically incorrect term!) and his opinion has overshadowed other stories that are newsworthy. (Sort of like the Secret Service scandal overshadowing the General Services Administration scandal).

The Place of Leadership. One more reflection on our President’s “historical” stand. When God sent prophets to Israel and Judah, declaring their sin, He pointed the finger at the priests, false prophets, and kings who led His people astray.

I think the leaders in America are letting down her people as well. The Supreme Court did so in 1973 when it issued the Roe v Wade decision legalizing abortion. Countless religious leaders have done so by buying into health-and-wealth messages or deconstructing the Bible or re-imaging Christ.

What’s so incredibly sad to me, though, is that we have the Bible available in our own language, translated over and over again to make it easy to understand. In other words, we are without excuse. It isn’t the leaders’ fault when we ignore the best and primary source that gives what we need for Salvation.

In the end, that’s where we’re at, isn’t it. As Peter says, “for they stumble because they are disobedient to the word and to this doom they were also appointed” (1 Peter 2:8b).

The Forbidden S Word

Some words are still forbidden in our western culture. A select few are bleeped from live shows, thanks to modern technology, because they are still considered inappropriate for the general populace. Certainly “adults” use those words, but they aren’t considered right for polite society.

Still other words get people fired. Anything caught on mike that might be construed as a racial slur is grounds for dismissal. Terms demeaning women or homosexuals are creeping into that same category.

Then there are the words no one will say, not publicly anyway. And no, sex is not one of them. Quite the opposite. When once sex was considered private, something not to be discussed in mixed company, now sex and all its parts are fair game, not only for discussion but for comedic source material.

So what is this forbidden S word, if not sex?

Sin.

No one wants to talk about sin in public. You won’t hear sin come up on Dr. Phil or David Letterman or Saturday Night Live.

Saying that someone sins is considered judgmental, the worst kind of accusation today. Someone who is judgmental is intolerant, which is tantamount to saying he is a perpetrator of hate crimes.

Yet sin does the greatest damage to a soul, a family, a business, a community, a government. Its consequences are deep, hurtful, and lasting. Lasting. As in, eternal. Apart from the forgiveness of Christ, sin damages whatever it touches.

It’s behind terrorism, behind sex trafficking, pedophilia, first degree murder, corporate greed, government corruption, HIV/AIDS, welfare fraud — in other words, it’s behind all the problems society wants to eradicate.

But nobody wants to talk about it.

Not even Christians.

When we do, we are deemed unloving, accused of being gleeful when we point the finger at sinful behavior, and even of rejoicing at the idea that people will be condemned to hell.

How ironic. Today it’s considered more loving to let people walk off a cliff in blissful ignorance than it is to shout out warnings for them to stop and turn around.

But the culture in Jeremiah’s day was no different. When he started pronouncing the warnings God charged him with, saying that Babylon would come and capture Judah, he was accused of treason. His life was threatened on more than one occasion, and eventually he was arrested.

People even came to him and said, What are you hearing from God? When he told them, they said he was making it up. At one point a group of them accused his assistant of getting Jeremiah to say negative prophecies against them.

The real issue wasn’t Jeremiah. It was God and His word. Those people did not want to submit to God’s authority. They wanted to go their own way.

At one point, Jeremiah told them, from God, to surrender to the Babylonian king. If they would wave the white flag, they would go into captivity but they would not die.

They refused, and a year and a half later when they were under siege and were starving to the point of eating their own dung, of cannibalizing their dead, they still did not bow to God’s direction.

Their defeat was total.

The king who would not follow the word the Lord delivered by Jeremiah, witnessed the murder of all his sons, and then his own eyes were blinded. He ended his days in a Babylonian dungeon.

All the nobles, priests, officials, scribes, anyone of standing who had not been killed were carried away into exile. Shockingly, the total number of people taken was only 4,600.

Over 600,000 people had migrated from Egypt during the exodus, but instead of growing and prospering, their number peaked out in David’s rule and then began to decline.

But to drop as low as less than 5,000? Did they never think to ask God what was wrong? Did they never consider that perhaps the prophets were right?

Or had they stopped listening to the prophets? Was sin already a dirty word, and they no longer talked about such things openly? And if anyone dared to be so bold as to stand on the street and tell people to repent, perhaps those walking by would avert their eyes and hurry toward home.

After all, who would use the forbidden S word in public? For shame!

Women’s Role In The Church — A Consequence Of The Fall

I recognize that I am out of step with my culture. It’s not an easy condition. I’d much rather be part of the “in crowd,” but reality is, Christianity is counter cultural. One of the things that makes us so is that we believe in grace. We don’t believe we earn our way into God’s kindly treatment of us. We believe that we do not merit His love or forgiveness or the hope of heaven, that we receive His favor only because He loves us and chose to give us what we cannot obtain for ourselves.

Another point that separates us, especially from those shaped by postmodern thought, is that we believe God spoke authoritatively through men of old, a process we refer to as inspiration. The Bible is the result, and we hold it to be God’s public declaration about His person, His work, His plan in the world.

Because it is from God and about God, we aren’t free to pick and choose what parts we like, which things we agree with and want to follow. That means we take the hard things (e.g. “I am the Potter, you are the clay”) along with the easy things (e.g. “I love you with an everlasting love.”)

One thing that has surfaced in the last fifty years as a hard thing for some people is the statement in several places in Scripture stating that men, not women, are to be in the role of pastor-teacher in the Church. 1 Timothy 2 goes so far as to give some explanation as to why God has ordained men to this role instead of women. One reason is simply the order of creation. The other has to do with Eve’s part of the Fall of Humankind.

And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression. (1 Tim. 2:14)

The Holy Spirit, through the human author of the letter, then alludes to the punishment God gave Eve as a result of her part of bringing sin into the world.

As a reminder, this is what God told Eve:

To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply
Your pain in childbirth,
In pain you will bring forth children;
Yet your desire will be for your husband,
And he will rule over you.” (Gen. 3:16)

The first part we have no trouble understanding. And the last part seems all too clear. But what about that “your desire will be for your husband”?

Before I continue, let me point out something that might slide by unnoticed. Before the Fall, there apparently was no husband head or ruler of woman. Adam describe Eve as bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. God said they were to cleave to one another. There was a unity, a bond that did not subjugate either person. But then sin …

But back to this troublesome “desire will be for your husband” line. I’ve heard some say this referred to her sexual desire, tying it to the pain in childbearing issue. I mean, if she would have such pain, the logical answer would be simply not to have children, except there would be this desire she has for her husband.

It’s a possibility. Except the reality seems to be that the desire is more on the side of the husband than on the side of the wife.

I think another possibility is to understand the phrase in light of what follows. He will rule over her … but now her desire will be to rule over him. It’s a possibility because the word which means desire, longing, craving is also used of a beast to devour.

OK, these are not nice pictures of women, I agree. But sin does not make us nice people. There’s one more piece to this puzzle. Back in 1 Timothy 2, there’s one of the most troublesome verses in Scripture, at least for women:

But women will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint. (1 Tim. 2:15)

What? But notice, this verse follows right after the one stating that women are not to be pastor-teachers because of Eve’s deception leading to transgression. The Holy Spirit seems to be answering the question, This mess we’re in because of Eve, is there hope?

But what mess? We have the same sin nature as men and are saved by grace just as they are. Childbearing certainly doesn’t save women from the pain of childbearing. And anyway, the subject is who is to have the role of teacher in the church. So it seems to me, taking Genesis 3:16 with 1 Timothy 2:15, that childbearing, being the role of women, nullifies the something in us that wants to countermand the consequence of sin — that man would rule.

In the sixties when women were “liberated” and childbearing could be regulated to a degree, women then did begin exerting this very desire to be in control. The unique role God gave to women, we undermined.

I could be all wrong in my understanding of these verses, but honestly, I don’t see a Biblical reason why this interpretation isn’t viable. And it seems to fit the facts.

All of that to say, the gender issues of today are a result of sin. But maybe that’s self-evident.