And Then What?

A friend of mine from my college days sent me a YouTube video which graphically recorded the declining fertility rate in all Western European nations and the dramatic increase in the population of all Western European countries of Muslims. By some figure like by 2025 more than half of the population of most Western European countries will be Muslims. My friend was very pessimistic about the future of the world. It was a video dramatic enough to get one to thinking.

My college courses in World History never really covered the world. Those courses only dealt with the history from the Fertile crescent westward. They never talked about the Far East and India. But there was one very obvious fact in the history we did read. That fact was that empires rise and fall. A civilization comes together and dominates the whole Western European land mass for a couple of hundred years and then fades away. Nobody has stayed on top forever.

There is also the fact in American History that a very large part of our population has believed that we were a special instrument of God's providence. We were a special creation by God to bless the world. We had a "manifest destiny" to cover the continent. We have a statue that says we are the haven for all the world's oppressed. Many of us see ourselves as a Christian nation with a divine duty to redeem the world. God shed his grace on us and we have been blessed by God for the good of the world.

Are there theologians and Christian scholars who are pondering the theological implications of the demise of the United States? Are there Christian thinkers who are exploring our role in the world as a "has been" power? Is that the time we call upon the great Exile tradition and see ourselves as being forsaken by God because we were not faithful or is that when we see the providence of God working in the world a new thing through the powers of the Far East and the powers of the Muslims? Of course, the fall of America could coincide with Armageddon and the beginning of the rapture. I suspect the last idea may be the shape that current preaching in many places takes. Does the providence of God's love and grace have a next chapter in the world after the fall of the United States? How would that demise of the United States be explained in our present theological climate?

More Evidence of Failure

A local congregation here in Henderson has paid for an ad in the paper to praise and honor one of their members. The newspaper's editorial staff picked it up and ran an editorial about the man and about the church's tribute to his Christian witness. It was a small breathe of fresh grace for those of us who are struggling to live a Christian witness. But it is such a small speck of light in what appears to be a flood of negative light.

The Republic of Ireland has finally published a study that has been ten years in the making that documents seventy years of abuse, mistreatment, rape, and cruelty to children in the Catholic run Foster Homes, Homes for Unwed Mothers, and Orphanages. The Presbyterian Church of Ireland is experiencing a kind of economic melt down in its Presbyterian Mutual Fund. Certainly some fall should be expected in these economic times, but the fall has exposed real problems.

There is a passage in Scripture where St. Paul advises Christians not to be involved in the court system as they ought to be able to resolve their own issues in their own community. St. Paul says Christians are going to be the ones who judge the rest of the world so why should Christians go and be judged by others. But the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in America is taking every congregation which wants to leave to court to grab the property. There is a segment of the Riverside Church in New York City which is taking the rest of the church to court to protest the new salary of the new minister. (No one ever protests the paying of a minister too little.)

Christians behaving badly continue to ruin the effectiveness of the Christian message. And it is all around us. My hunch would be that every person who posts on that site called "Home in Henderson" would claim to be a Christian person, but there is no place where there is more meanness, more bigotry, more cruelty, more slander,and more gossip than on that site. If we wonder why the Christian faith is being deserted by the young, there may be evidence that they do not see it making any difference in the way most of the people who call themselves that act.

When there are more tributes to Christian witnesses and fewer negative stories the Christian story might have a chance.

A Long Way to Go!

Fleming Rutledge tells the story of a young girl who goes into a jewelry store in New York and wants to buy a necklace. She wants a nice silver necklace. The clerk shows her one. She says she want one with a cross on it, and she wants one with that little man on it. The clerk says, "Are you Catholic?" The girl is a bit surprised but says no, she just thinks that little man on the cross gives the necklace a little special flair. Who is telling her the story about that little man?

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life announced the results of a survey they took. I don't know anything about the Pew Forum so I don't know what their agenda may be, but they report that those people who go to church an average of twice or more a month are much more likely to support torture and water boarding than those who do not go to church. The more you hear the story of Jesus and his love for his enemies apparently the more eager you are to torture your own enemies. Who is telling these people the story about Jesus?

I was called and selected to be among those first interviewed to be on two juries concerning the death penalty. Because I was a minister I kept thinking that the prosecuting lawyers would question me about my attitude about the death penalty. They asked a lot of questions about a lot of things and when it came time to exercise their privileges to excuse jurors, I was excused both times by the defense attorneys. I was very surprised. When I mentioned this to some attorney friends they told me that defense attorneys have profiled clergy as being very harsh and heartless jurors. Clergy vote to "hang them high and fried them toasty." Needless to say, I was shocked. People who spend their lives reading and telling others about a God who loves and forgives have no forgiveness or mercy in their souls.

Man, it seems to me that we still have a long, long way to go.

Abiding in Love

John's Gospel in the 15th chapter talks about our "abiding" in Christ. He is the vine and we are the branches, and we are to "abide" in that relationship. Strikes me that we do not often hear the word "abide" used very much, but we have a lot of situations where the concept is promoted. There are a host of people who have abides as N.C. State fans through thick and thin. There are people who have abided, stayed faithful, to the State Basketball program from Norman Sloan, Les Robinson, Herb Sendek, and now Sidney Lowe. They have stayed strong supporters in good times and bad. They have abided in their loyalty. We have Financial Planners who are urging us to "abide" in our financial plans. Do not panic. Do not do anything rash. Simple abide in the plan you made in previous times. John says that Jesus told his disciples to abide in him. To continue to follow him. As we abide in Christ, the love of God will abide in us through Christ and it will manifest itself in our sharing God's love for all creation. As we abide in Christ, the love of God flows through us and we engage in works of compassion and justice on behalf of others.

So what good is that to me? What is in it for me? Why should I care about doing works of compassion and justice for others? Well, apart from the fact that when compassion and justice are done for others it means there is more compassion and justice in the world and you benefit from that, but that is not the reason given by John. In his first letter he says that that love flowing through us casts out fear. As we dwell in Christ and the love of God flows through us into those deeds we lose our fears.

I think we lose three great fears. The fear of insignificance. It seems to me that one of our culture's greatest fear is that we do not matter. Isn't that what MySpace,Facebook, and Twitter are all about. That somebody out there knows and cares that I am going to lunch. There are billions of people in a world with millions of stars. All we are is "dust in the wind." As the love of God flows through us and we care for others, we live in the contentment that God loves us and we are making a difference in the lives of others.

The fear of not being good enough. If we matter and what we do matters, then there is the fear that we may not measure up. The fear of failure. That we will be put in the goat section. But if we abide in the love of God in Jesus and that gift of forgiveness and salvation is ours then we don't have to worry about being good enough. We are not saved by our works. God's love is an act in Jesus to be a remedy for our sin, so we lose that fear.

The fear of the stranger, the foreigner, the unknown. As we abide in God's love and let the love flow through us in our works of compassion for others, we share in the love of God for all His creation, and we no longer immediately believe everything different is evil.

So while we are "abiding" in the love of God in Jesus, that love dwells in us and flows through us into our loving others and that perfect love casts out all fears. It is one of the most common greetings in the New Testament, "Fear not."

Trashed Some Old Friends

My father worked for a couple of years travelling as a salesman for D.C. Heath Book publishing company. Freud might say that my interests in books came from my longing for my father. But I have enjoyed books for a long time. I worked at Princeton Theological Seminary at the Theological Book Agency for all three years of my Seminary education. I managed the Book Agency my senior year. I got a lot of books at Seminary cost. I spent a lot of money on books.

One of the major expenses in each of my calls was the moving expenses. Each calling church was shocked by the moving expenses because there were so many books. When I put them all up in the library of St. Stephen Presbyterian Church in Houston, Texas, one of the male members of the church, an intellectual himself, said, "That is a fabulous library you have there. Too bad this congregation is not interested in that sort of things." Ouch!

So now one of the biggest issues I have is what to do with all of those books now that I am retired. There are many great scholarly books that I have seldom looked at but which I always kept so that I would have resources to look up the answers to questions that somebody might ask me. My intellectual security blanket. There are lots of novels and books that I have read, and I doubt that I will ever re-read. There are commentaries and Biblical study material that I still may want to use as I get invited to preach from time to time.

But this morning for the first time, I took a box of books to the county dump. They were old friends, but I had no need for them. There was my Freshman-in-college English anthology. But I had carried it with me for forty years. There were some other books that just did not measure up. I am sending to third world seminary many of the "classic" books, like the Theology of the New Testament by Bultmann or some of Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics. I am giving to the local library many of the novels and good history books.

But I trashed some of my old friends today in the dump. It has to be done. I guess even now I find it hard to let go of that security blanket. Those books were a part of the self-imagine, part of my self-concept. But they have to go. They may have even been idols as I may have been tempted to put more importance on them than on the reality that I was a child of God who mattered even without books or even if I did not know the answer, or even if I was wrong. Maybe it is a good thing I have to start getting rid of all those books, and I can finally begin to be free to be a simple child of God who matters. But it sure was hard tossing that box into the dumpster. I still got a lot more to dump.