It Is Written - A Christian's Debate Check

Today is Tuesday, September 29, 2020. The media is in an all-out frenzy about tonight’s first debate of the 2020 presidential election; it is politics and political spin in full gear. Of course, our entire country is embroiled in a fierce debate regarding a plethora of issues: justice, policing, abortion, immigration, gun control, racism, global warming, energy, COVID response, socialism vs. capitalism, conspiracy theories, marriage, gender, foreign policy, voting rights and procedures, healthcare, abortion, religion, judicial philosophies, church and state, taxes, free speech, education, visions of the future, love Trump/hate Trump, … - you name it.

“For it is written: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and I will set aside the understanding of the experts. Where is the philosopher? Where is the scholar? Where is the debater of this age? Hasn’t God made the world’s wisdom foolish?” 1 Corinthians 1:19-20 (HCSB), Paul wrote to the Corinthian Christians, ancient Greeks, who were enamored with human wisdom and loved to debate just about everything, and in the process managed to make a mess. We will make a mess of things and will reason, sound, and look like anything but Christlike if we follow in the Corinthians’ footsteps. Their debating fueled their pride, entrenched their positions, validated their sense of superiority, polluted their ethics, excused their immorality, denigrated and dismissed their neighbor, created room for being unkind and unloving, and made their human wisdom the ultimate standard.

“It is written!” Paul interjected when they ceased from shouting at each other for a brief moment. Three words Christians should never forget; they are synonymous with, “God says!” They are an affirmation that the Bible, God’s written word supersedes all human debate and should be the checkpoint of all Christian persuasions, politics, policies, platforms, public engagement, proper conduct, personal matters, and relationships.The sad reality, however, is that in the current public debates Christians are as divided as their non-Christian counterparts, functioning out of political affiliation, eclectic theology, personal preference, common fears, religious emotionalism, and selective reading of what “is written;” conforming the Word of God to fit their viewpoint, their side of the debate, rather than the other way around.

Fully adhering to that which “is written” by God, will not make any one of us popular, but it will make us Christlike. It will put us at odds with both the Republican and Democratic platforms, our denominations, our favorite news source, our culture at large, and even the people we go to church and hang out with. Among other things, it reminds us that loving God and loving our neighbor are the two most foundational laws regarding everything. It compels us to be peacemakers. It will not allow us to deny the unborn full human status. It will not permit us to be unwelcoming and mistreat foreigners and aliens (both legal and illegal). It requires us to be the very best stewards of the environment. It defines sexual morality. It leaves no doubt that God conceived marriage as being between a man and a woman. It champions justice on every level. It tells us of our responsibility towards the poor and oppressed. It stresses personal responsibility and industry.  It teaches fiscal responsibility. It denounces violence. It warns us that allegiance to God is more important than allegiance to country. It reminds us that because of human depravity laws need to check the greed of free markets, govern people and their interactions, enshrine justice, and preserve freedoms. It makes it clear that a godless society will never be better than a society that exalts God and what He has “written,” without coercion. It defines what is wicked and sinful. It unequivocally informs us that everyone needs Jesus Christ, to be saved from sin and its penalty, to be changed for the better, and to be a much better doer of all that “is written,” than to be a slick debater.

To God be all glory. Love you, Pastor Hans.       

Innocent Blood - Sanctity of Human Life

 “… Why then will you sin against innocent blood by killing David without cause?’” (1 Samuel 19:5 ESV) is what Jonathan asked as he stood up against his Dad, King Saul, who was out to kill David, who was also Jonathan’s best friend. In the long term this didn’t benefit Jonathan, it wasn’t beneficial to his career, soured the relationship with his father, and complicated his life. Standing up for what is right is usually costly, yet in doing so Jonathan not only protected his friend’s life but also drew a line in the sand against one of the seven things God hates, “Arrogant eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, …” (Proverbs 6:17 HCSB).They journey together, form a wicked triumvirate, the shedding of innocent blood, arrogance, and lying; where you find one you do not have to look far to find the other. Shedding of innocent blood requires the arrogance of your life being more valuable than the one you are willing to depose off, it necessitates lying to both to yourself and those to whom you justify the act. And God absolutely abhors and hates all three. It is a terrible thing to find ourselves doing what God hates, what is completely unlike him.One of the consequences of leaving, disavowing, turning your back on the only true and living God and substitute manmade religion or godless philosophies and ideologies, is that we end up playing God, and in doing so we both feed our pride and lie to ourselves. Listen to the ancient indictment of God’s own people, “They did not destroy the peoples as the LORD had commanded them but mingled with the nations and adopted their ways. They served their idols, which became a snare to them. They sacrificed their sons and daughters to demons. They shed innocent blood— the blood of their sons and daughters whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan; so the land became polluted with blood. They defiled themselves by their actions and prostituted themselves by their deeds.Therefore the LORD’s anger burned against His people, and He abhorred His own inheritance”(Psalm 106:34-40 HCSB).How much innocent blood has been spilled across this land since 1776? Justified on the altars of greed, Westward expansion, racism, political expediency, progress, personal freedom, and the worship of self? And we are continuing the bloodshed, arrogance, and lies. But the numbers of the most innocent, the unborn, the ones whose cries we cannot hear, are  staggering: More than 59,000,000, yes, fifty-nine million since 1973 (Roe vs. Wade); 926,000 in 2014 (touted as a record low).We are foolish to think that God’s anger will not “burn against” us when we embrace that which he hates. We too will reap what we sow, personally and collectively. Calls for God to “bless America” will be hollow if we do not dare to stand with Jonathan wherever and whenever innocent blood is spilled.May we humble ourselves and repent this Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, January 21, 2018.To God be all glory, Pastor Hans     

Grady in January – Sanctity of Human Life, Human Rights, and Justice

Grady in January – Sanctity of Human Life, Human Rights, and JusticeDid you know that you are precious, deeply loved, and incredibly valuable? But not just you, every other person is as well. It is an indisputable fact, from conception to the grave every human being is precious to God, loved by God, and has intrinsic value and dignity given to him/her by God.Our children were home for this Christmas, when they arrived it was hugs and kisses and whenever my arms are wrapped around them I still feel like I am holding the most precious and valuable God will ever put into my arms. That’s also the thing making the good-byes so hard. For a number of years now one of the Christmas gifts Susie, my wife, has given to each family member is a calendar with pictures from our yearly family gathering at the beach. This year’s January is graced with a picture of Grady, the youngest grandson. It is beyond cute, off the precious scale. It’s not hard to spot the incredible value of that little boy, it is easy to fall in love with him, one look and you know he is a gift from God.But what if Grady had been born with a handicap, if he wouldn’t be the perfect looking little baby boy? What if his conception was at an altogether bad time? What if his arrival spelled a serious inconvenience, even hardship? What if his life expectancy was very short? Would it alter his value? Would he be less precious? Would he be less lovable? Would he be less deserving of dignity? Would his life somehow lack sanctity? Of course not.We struggle with human rights, with the sanctity of human life, with justice. Somehow while rallying for the right to choose we rationalize trampling on the right to live. Somehow we campaign for lives that truly matter while endorsing the slaughter of the most innocent. We are good at claiming rights for our ourselves but are much more reluctant to grant them to others, especially when and where they impact us, our freedoms, our opportunities, our happiness, and our prosperity and posterity. We are good at framing our arguments, catering to the like-minded, and vilifying, devaluing, stupidifying, and marginalizing those who oppose us. We are for liberty and justice for all who are like us, but then of course there are exceptions. We are prone to forget that preciousness and sanctity of every human life, human rights, and justice for all from conception to the grave is not just an issue, or a cause, a political platform item, an argument to be fought over, a debate about morals and ethics; it is about real people, pre-born, newborn, children, tweens and teens, young people, adults, and old people; friends, neighbors, classmates, coworkers, citizens, illegals, criminals, and enemies; poor, rich educated, illiterate, healthy, and sick people of all colors; all of them created in the image of God. Their pictures, even if it is an ultrasound, and existence are as real as Grady in January.It is up to you and me, not just to law and policy (as important as they are) to stand for justice, for the right to life, to treat each other with dignity and respect, to acknowledge the sanctity of every human life. It takes both a personal and collective commitment to make liberty and justice for all work in real life.He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy (kindness) and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8 (NIV)To God be all glory. Love you, Pastor Hans 

And He Blessed Them

This is the written account of Adam's line. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And when they were created, he called them "man" (human). Genesis 5:1-2 (NIV) Men can’t have babies, God blessed women with that ability. Now I have heard women wish that men would have to go through pregnancy and childbirth because it would change them, humble them, look at life and the world a little different, and I suppose it surely would. The mere ability to sire and conceive a child does not make one good parent, a good Mom or Dad, that takes embracing the ability and responsibilities of motherhood and fatherhood. Too many children are born every day to men and women who like part A (the conceiving activity) and have no interest in part B (the Mom/Dad responsibility). But God has always meant for A and B to be inseparable, it is our selfishness and the brokenness of our world that far too often separates the two. Children are blessed when someone takes on the responsibility of mothering and fathering them, conversely their lives are much more difficult without either, in fact far too many children never see the light of day wherever and whenever A is divorced from B. B (a Mother’s and a Father’s heart) seeks life, abundant life for their children and children in general. Did you notice in the scripture above that God made people male and female, with the ability to reproduce, to be Fathers/Dads and Mothers/Moms and that God blessed them as such. I can’t help but think that God meant for that blessing of his to continue, for them to be blessed together, for their family to be blessed, their children to be blessed, for their grandchildren to be blessed, for generations they would never see to be blessed. Ask yourself, “How important is mothering and fathering the way God has intended it for blessing to flow from generation to generation?” Having a baby changes a woman’s body, being a Mom changes her heart. Pregnancy will leave stretchmarks on the body, parenting will leave stretchmarks on the heart, the mind, and the soul of both Mom and Dad. Having a baby is a nine-month process, being a Mom or Dad is lifelong. From what I am told and what I have observed, pregnancy and birth is challenging, uncomfortable, and painful. From my own experience I know that being a parent is challenging, uncomfortable, and often painful far longer. How many tears wept for their children will run down the faces of Moms and Dads and drip to the ground around the world today? How many oceans could be filled with the tears of Moms and Dads shed throughout the ages? On the flipside, how much goodness, how much joy, how much blessing will be dished out today by good Moms and Dads? How much blessing has the world seen and experienced because of women and men who have been willing to be Moms and Dads, who care enough to fully engage, who dare to dream blessing for their children, their children’s children, the children of our world. I challenge you to never divorce A from B, to make up your mind to be all that God has enabled you to be in regard to children, to be someone who funnels life and unloads boatloads of the blessing of God. Happy Mothers’ Day. To God be all glory, Pastor Hans    

Sanctity of Human Life and the 2nd Greatest Commandment

 Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The LORD our God is the one and only LORD. And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.” Mark 12:29-31 (NLT) I learned something this week (no snide comments needed): Don’t delay Granny when she is wanting to see her newborn grandson. I am telling you this is serious business. Who knew? And why wasn’t I told?There is something incredibly amazing about holding a newborn baby. That totally helpless, completely dependent little person has already expanded history. He has grown the love of his parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and nephew. We, his family, have been entrusted with him, we bear lifelong responsibility towards him. It would be unthinkable to discard him, it would wrong not to love him, take care of him, meet his needs, have noble dreams for his future.His little amazingness didn’t start at 5:30 AM on Monday morning. The Biologist, the theologian, modern medicine, and his parents all know when little Grady’s life began – the very instant he was conceived. He, like us, didn’t begin his life subhuman with a need to acquire humanness and personhood somewhere along the way. From the moment he was conceived, we, his parents, his family, his doctor, his community, his country never have had any legitimate freedom to see him and treat him as anything but a human being, a full member of the human race. We bear individual and collective responsibility to love him. The second greatest commandment of God has applied to Grady, and every other human being, from the moment his DNA fingerprint existed.Someone challenged Jesus Christ on this demand of God for us to love our neighbor as ourselves. “And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29), he asked in order “to justify himself.” Jesus’ reply was what is now known as the story of the “Good Samaritan.” Jesus made it plain that the man, a lawyer, was asking the wrong question. Wrong questions lead to wrong answers. Wrong questions are convenient when you want to skirt the real issues. According to God, to Jesus, “Am I a loving neighbor?” “Am I responding to people placed in front of me with compassion, with care, with mercy, with a willingness to take time, to meet their needs?” When you ask those questions the issues of inconvenience, disruption, bad timing, etc. go right out of the window. The command to “love your neighbor as yourself” does not exclude pregnancy. In fact, no one will ever encounter a more vulnerable, dependent person than a child in the womb. That little girl’s or boy’s life depends on the mother keeping the second most important commandment, on his mother to love her/him as herself. It depends on us as a people to apply the same commandment to every human being, to ask the right questions, and to encourage and support every woman who choses love.To God be all glory. Love you, Pastor Hans

With Liberty and Justice for All

If you fail under pressure, your strength is too small. Rescue those who are unjustly sentenced to die; save them as they stagger to their death. Don’t excuse yourself by saying, “Look, we didn’t know.” For God understands all hearts, and he sees you. He who guards your soul knows you knew. He will repay all people as their actions deserve. Proverbs 24:10-12 (NLT)70 years ago, on January 27, Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration and extermination camp was liberated. 1.1 million people were murdered there, not because they had been convicted of some crime deserving death but because they did not fit Nazi ideology, and most of them because they were Jews. In order to pull of mass murder on that scale the Nazi leadership had brainwash, intimidate , and silence most all of Germany. Think about it, how else do you slaughter millions of human beings without any large scale opposition? How do you keep it out of the media? How do you manage to keep an entire country from crying out against it? It really is an old play book, cooked up in hell a long time ago.You have to have great slogans, “ARBEIT MACHT FREI” (work liberates) hung at the entrance of concentration camps. A little hard work never has harmed anybody, has it? “For God and country.” “Allahu Akbar” (God is the greatest). “A woman’s right to choose.” What fool would challenge God and patriotism? Who can deny that God is the greatest? Who doesn’t endorse the freedom to choose? Great slogans ease the conscience; mollify the urge to think for yourself. You want people to love the slogans regardless of the truth.You have to intimidate, sow fear to point that people are glad that what happens to others does not happen to them. You have to exploit what every kid learns on the school playground – to be afraid of being laughed at, being ostracized, to be called names, to be bullied, of being hurt. Terror works, fear is powerful. You have to be willing to belittle, shout down, embarrass, defame, lie, betray, hurt, and kill in the name of the cause. Sowing fear can’t worry about being clean, getting dirty, embracing violence, a “few” dispensable lives.You have to be good at stripping real people of their humanity. You want people to think that Jews are categorically bad, the infidels are bad, an unwanted unplanned baby is bad, as are liberals, conservatives, environmentalists, homosexuals and all of the LBGTQ crowd, fundamentalists, Christians, Muslims, atheists they are all bad. And it is okay to dislike bad, to hate bad. Getting rid of bad is not that bad of a thing, in fact it might even be good. The less bad people there are the better; you have to be completely out of touch to disagree with that. Bad also doesn’t deserve the same rights as good, does it? Bad and bad people are really more of an issue to be dealt with, personalizing only complicates things. It is much easier to deal with an issue like the issue of slavery, the issue of the Jews, the issue of abortion, the issue of the Middle East Conflict, the issue of Aids, of Ebola, hunger, injustice. Issues are far easier to deal with, they don’t stare you in the eye, issues don’t have beating hearts.On January 22, 1973 the US Supreme Court legalized abortion, since then 55,000,000 (55 million!) human beings have lost their lives through abortion in the United States alone. They have fallen victim to pills, solutions, suction machines, dismemberment, and the like. Where is the outrage, the disgust, the shame? There has not been one, not a single aborted child that was less than 100% human. There has not been one aborted child guilty or even accused of a crime. The reason they have been so easily and mercilessly killed is that they have been stripped of their humanity (How conditioned have we become to zygote, embryo, fetus as meaning something less than human). They have been called “mistakes,” “inconveniences,” “bad timing,” “accidents,” everything but what they really are – persons, human beings, living images of God. They have been deemed dispensable, we are better off without them than with them. They have been stripped of the most basic human rights and legal protection under the smoke screen of a woman’s right to choose. They have been made into issue to debate rather than people to love.O that there would be “liberty and justice for all.”To God be all glory, Pastor Hans

Respect for human life

Have you ever been told something you didn’t want to hear but you needed to? Those are the conversation we don’t really want to be part of. So if you don’t want to hear something we all need to hear, if you don’t want to engage into a conversation that really needs to happen, don’t read on.Last week, in the wake of Detroit’s homicide numbers for 2012, Mayor Dave Bing said, “We’ve just lost respect for each other; we’ve lost respect for life.” The number he was lamenting was 411 up from 377 the previous year.  What a sad statistic, Mayor Bing had every reason to lament it. However, it pales in light of the fact that in 2012 approximately 1,200,000 (1.2 Million) pre-born little boys and girls had their lives snuffed out through abortion. Indeed we have lost respect for human life.It is even sadder because we can no longer claim ignorance. One no longer can argue about when human life begins, modern science can now identify human being from its first cell on. Following conception are merely stages in the life of a human being both in and outside the womb. It is even sadder because these killings are legal through all nine months of pregnancy, even right before a child slips through the birth canal. It is even sadder because we build an entire money making industry around the taking, the destruction of little human beings. And it is sadder still that we don’t want to hear about it, we don’t want to be exposed to the ugly truth that since the Roe vs. Wade decision rendered by the highest court of the land, which has a responsibility to uphold justice and liberty for all, well over 50, 000,000 (fifty million) pre-born babies have died. We have acquiesced to stripping an entire group, the pre-born, of the rights each American holds dear: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. We do not want to hear of morality (although the taking of innocent life is an immoral act). We do not want to hear of responsibility past a condom regarding sexual behavior. We don’t want to think about having to take responsibility for acts of unbridled (and unprotected) acts of passion and lust.Mayor Bing is right, “We have lost respect for life,” and I wonder if he included all those little boys and girls who lost their lives via an abortion pill or the hands of an abortionist in the city of Detroit. We cannot devalue human life anywhere along its entire life span and hope to maintain respect for human life. We cannot engage in a conversation about respect for human life while stripping an entire class of all its fundamental rights. We cannot maintain respect for human life if we do not want to talk about responsibility regarding our capacity to create life. We cannot hold on to respect for human life if do not reckon with the reality that we will answer to our Creator, God Almighty, for all of our decisions and acts.Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness are indeed a great endowment and great values as long as we choose them for all.To God be all glory, Pastor Hans

01-29-12, "with liberty and justice for all" - sanctitiy of human life

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."Every day people across this nation proudly recite these words, including our leaders. The phrase “under God” has received a lot of attention in the recent past, but it doesn’t matter all that much since as a nation we don’t believe the words anyway – especially “with liberty and justice for all.”Unless we decide to mean what we say today, tomorrow, this year, next year, and the years after that we will continue to teach the words to kindergarteners but we will also train them not to mean them, to accept the hypocrisy, if not defend it. Actually they are the lucky ones, they were allowed to live long enough to learn the pledge. They were not stripped of their liberty, they were not denied their humanity, they were included when it comes to “liberty and justice for all.” Before they were born their mothers chose to let them live, to recognize them for what they are, humans, people, persons, even though our laws say otherwise. Laws which Pledge-reciting officials wrote and enacted and Pledge-reciting judges upheld, against all truth and scientific evidence to the contrary.If there really is “justice for all,” how do we justify taking the lives of growing babies, simply because they are still in their mothers’ wombs? How do we justify denying the most basic human right, the right to live, to an entire group of human beings? How do we justify deeming some stages of human existence as not deserving liberty and justice? How do we justify that a mother’s right of making choices about her life includes being able to take the life of another human being because it is unplanned, unwanted, inconvenient, the wrong gender, less than perfect, or will face less than ideal circumstances?There was a time when African American men, women, and children weren’t deserving of liberty and justice simply because they were called slaves. There was a time when Native American men, women, and children weren’t deserving of liberty and justice simply because they were called savages, and because they were inconvenient politically, economically, and personally. All the reasoning and rhetoric employed then was as flawed and dishonest as the reasoning and rhetoric employed against granting the pre-born the fundamental right to personhood, life, liberty, and justice.As “One nation under God” we should care what God thinks on matters as important and fundamental as these, He (God) created them male and female, and he blessed them and called them “human.” Genesis 5:2 (NLT, parenthesis mine). We should choose to do no less for all people.To God be all glory, love you, Pastor HansP.S. There are God and Life-honoring alternatives to abortion. The first step is to choose not to have one and instead be someone who believes in liberty and justice for that new person. If you can’t find help feel free to contact me, thegermanshepherd@juno.com, 209 852-2029.