All Issues Are Not Equal

 It was 1992. Even though I had a decade of ministry behind me, they were in small churches, and I did not regard myself as any great “veteran” of the vocation. I was part of an inter-church team, working on a project with some other ministers of my ilk; similar background, similar church of origin, similar training. By all appearances, we were four peas in a pod. It was an election year, so politics was one of the obvious topics to distract the minds of four young preachers away from what they were supposed to be focusing on. For me, it was a pretty easy choice that year. The topic of abortion made it easy, and I shared as much.

That was the first time I heard a fellow-believer utter these words: “I like to think I’m not a single-issue voter.” I was actually a bit taken back. I would not consider myself a single-issue voter either, but I also thought that it should be fairly obvious that not all issues are equal. So, I sparred with him a bit. We got back to work. His words continued to perplex me. They never became one bit more palatable over time. But, they seemed to be such an aberration to how any thinking Christian should articulate himself or herself that I did not walk away vexed. I was a little worried about this individual, but I was not particularly worried about the state of the church as a whole.

Now, we are approaching the election of 2020. I DO find myself vexed. I DO find myself quite worried about the church and the worldliness of thought that has been embraced by professed Christians; many sheep, but also not a few of the shepherds and pastors (so-called) of the flock of God. The script has so-flipped in the last 28 years that even many writers and leaders among “evangelicals” (a word that has lost any consensus of meaning) are actually producing arguments as to why Christians are safe to wink at this issue. Long-passed are the straw-men arguments of “rape and incest” or “life of the mother” as the reason abortions should be legal. Long-gone as well are the empty mantras such as “rare but legal.” In fact, some in the visible church have become so darkened in their understanding that they now claim abortion is a Christian cause.

What I have to say here is not written to the pro-choice crowd. It will only infuriate them ... so be it.  It is written to those who profess to follow Christ. My prayer is for changed hearts, but it may very well cost me some friends and relatives. It may make it difficult for old acquaintances to look at me in the same way. I have counted that cost, and with a degree of fear and trembling, I accept it. Today, the words coming from professed believers: “I’m not a single-issue voter,” no longer sound just like a strange and disturbing oddity. They now sound like the deceived and calloused boasts of darkened minds making a pretense of enlightenment.

Let me reiterate what I believed in 1992: “All issues are not equal.” Now, let me elaborate upon what I meant then: “All issues are not equal … they are not even political. Some, like abortion, are moral. They are theological. They are spiritual. They are only societal in that they expose the utter depravity of a collective of people.

The final catalyst that provoked me into putting these thoughts onto paper was an article from someone who claimed to be an “ardent pro-lifer” who was trying to encourage Christians to not be afraid to cast their vote for the candidate supported by the ardently pro-abortion party. It was a rather thinly-veiled diatribe against the other candidate in view of his past sins and current style. In defense of the man she was endorsing, she called him a man who has “struggled” with his faith. Others would conclude that he is merely one more politician who has compromised his faith for expediency.

The writer completely lost credibility with me when she began a series of challenges prefaced with the words: “I cannot take you seriously when …” Each challenge was essentially “I cannot take you seriously when you claim this virtue is important to you but you ignore some lack of virtue in the sitting president.” These lacks of virtue were typically sins of the heart, which God indeed takes seriously … just as he takes seriously my sins of the heart, your sins of the heart, and even the sins of the heart of the sanctimonious author of the article. My immediate reaction to her, and I very much stand by it, would be to answer, “I cannot take you seriously when you claim to be an “ardent pro-lifer” even as you attempt to persuade your readers into voting for a candidate representing a political party that has based its platform on the sins of Romans 1.

According to Paul, societies on the precipice of being turned-over by God to the consequences of their sinfulness also endorse deviant sexual practices, undermine parental and other kinds of authority, as well as engage in ruthless and violent behavior. Additionally, they are described as “unloving” or “heartless” (Romans 1:31). Of course, those are the renderings of translations that came into existence for the so-called “sake of clarity.” Unfortunately, “simplicity” does not always equate to “clarity.” The word Paul uses is astorgous. Essentially, that is a negative prefix followed by storge. You may recall that Greek has several words that are translated into English as “love.”  Storge refers to the natural familial affection of parent to child and child to parent. Older versions are more precise when they render the term “without natural affection.” The infanticide we know as abortion is graphically captured by the term astorgous.

Here is the reality on the ground in 2020: the American voter has a choice between two candidates who are flawed and sinful, each in their own spectacular ways. Here is the irony: many among a flawed and sinful electorate will make a choice in November based on how the flawed and sinful advocates of each candidate can make the case that “their guy” is the lesser of two evils. If you think that your vote needs to be based on determining which candidate is the lesser of two evils, you might just be too naïve to vote. If that is our idea of self-governance, we would be just as well off with a king.

The right to have a say in determining who will lead us is a rather unique phenomenon in human history. When that process becomes about ANYTHING beyond issues, it becomes as absurd as attempting to return to Junior High School to vote for the “Most Popular Girl and Boy.” Do you really believe that you are adequately insightful so as to determine which candidate is the more righteous of the two? Can you really even know if they are more or less righteous than you? Stick to the issues. And, as I think may have already mentioned, “All issues are not equal.”

I have avoided the use of the proper names of the political parties and their respective candidates. It is not to insult anyone’s intelligence. It is a “style” thing. My agenda is to keep you focused on issues and not personalities. If someone tries to persuade you to vote against your own convictions about abortion based on their own hatred (can we please quit parsing words?) of one of the candidates, do not be gaslighted. Redundancy may be in order here. “All issues are not equal.”

Occasionally, I respond to someone’s Facebook post or a comment within the string, only to later shake my head and wonder, “What was the point?” The spiritual darkness of this age cannot be adequately addressed in a handful of characters. I used the term “infanticide” as a synonym for abortion in one such comment. The response it drew was to scoff at the term “infanticide” and to invoke the mantra of “a woman’s right to choose.” Who declared that term sacred? It is used these days as though it is some sort of a holy doctrine. Even many Christians are afraid to challenge it. It is not blasphemy to question it.

No matter how forceful, heartstring-tugging or manipulative is the rhetoric of pro-abortion advocates, and no matter how convoluted the spin of their arguments, the activity of abortion involves the termination of a human life. No one can sanitize that with rhetoric. In some states, this infanticide is allowed up to the moment of birth; in a couple of states, a little beyond that moment. Infanticide is a perfectly sound synonym for abortion. The satanic ploy of muddling reality with euphemisms and soaring rhetoric is as old as the Fall.

One “Christian” argument for abortion is that Jesus never spoke to the issue. I would ask, “In view of what we know of first-century Judaism and of the place that the Law of Moses held in that society, do you think He really needed to?” A sound biblical argument can be made against abortion, but to Christians who seem to be a little gray on this matter, does not “Thou shall not kill” cover it for you? To my knowledge, Jesus also did not speak to cyber-crime, pedophilia, speeding or crossing against the signal. 

Once upon a time, a man named Cyrus became the king of Persia, a nation that had conquered Babylon after that kingdom had carried the Jews into foreign exile. That turned out to be a very good thing for God’s people. Cyrus ended their captivity. Now, this was not happenstance. God decreed it in advance. The Bible makes this clear. Now, was Cyrus a godly king or simply a secular king that God raised up for His Own purpose? The evidence seems to point to the latter. Still, I wonder how many Jews disapproved of being freed by a pagan. I am not suggesting that such clarity will ever be available to us in this current election cycle, before or after November 3rd, only that God raising up Whoever He chooses for His Own purposes is not an unprecedented thing.

If you cannot bring yourself to vote for either candidate, that is up to you. To not vote at all is not a popular option, but it is the voter’s right, and I could conceive of such a scenario for myself. But, so long as the issues (especially, the greatest of issues) are so dramatically contrasted, my choice is an easy one. I don’t have to base my decision on my affection for one man, my disdain for another, or a relative balance of affection and disdain for either.  

John MacArthur has gone on record: “There’s no way that a Christian can affirm the slaughter of babies, homosexual activity, homosexual marriage, or any kind of gross immorality” (cited by Michael Gryboski in Christian Post). I have often joked to friends that I can never be as sure of as many things as is Dr. MacArthur. But, I’ll go this far: I will never be able to wrap my head around the idea that a Bible-believer can affirm these things simply because they personally despise any candidate.

So, What Lives DO Matter, part 2

Twice in two days, it has been suggested to me that because I have no use for the organization known as Black Lives Matter nor for the slogan that they have introduced into the public sphere, it can only follow that I do not care about the well-being of black people in America. Ironically, that leap of reasoning makes my own point more eloquently than I can.

I wrote an entry last week, attempting to draw a distinction between a virtue that might believe that “black lives matter” and the political movement, Black Lives Matter. The movement is progressive-extremist, Marxist, and according to their own web site, intent on disrupting the western nuclear family. Many have been pointing this out for some time. The previous article was just my own take on the matter. Suffice it to say, I am pleased that many people are beginning to recognize that while the slogan is innocuous enough, the organization is dangerous and treacherous. Thinking people are able to delineate between an okay sentiment and a not-so-okay organization.

Here’s the sticky wicket. The movement coined the slogan and foisted it upon us. The two are conflated by design. The mantra was birthed in demagoguery. It is no accident that if a person refuses to recite the mantra, “black lives matter,” because he does not want to even hint that he supports the organization, he can only be racist. Inevitably, he will be accused of “speaking volumes” with his silence, suggesting that such silence can only mean that black lives do not matter to him. (Perhaps, you have followed a certain NFL player trying to shame a certain NFL owner into jumping on the BLM bandwagon.) Insisting that everyone must recite, “black lives matter,” lest silence renders them racist is a naked manipulation ploy.

So, if a good slogan is the fruit of a poisonous tree (the BLM organization), it appears that social justice warriors who are not out to disrupt the nuclear family have one of two options. They can either try to wrestle the slogan away from its mother and appropriate it for good, or, they can rally around a new slogan, one birthed in less sinister soil. An old friend pointed me to Albert Mohler’s podcast page. A scholar in the Southern Baptist movement, he has dealt with this issue very similarly to me, but his concluding “advice” differs subtly. His conclusion is basically, “Embrace the slogan, but reject the movement.” I prefer, “Embrace the sentiment, reject the movement, but know that if you recite the mantra, you risk identifying yourself with some folks, some ideas and some agendas with which you may not wish to be identified.

Slogans are not my strong suit. “Working Together to Elevate Black Lives without Insisting that White People Must Loathe Themselves and Actually Trying to Work Together for a Degree of Racial Harmony … ‘Matters’”.  A little cumbersome for a hat or T-shirt, I suppose.

A fellow who recently circulated a meme defended his effort when called out with an argument that really settled nothing. The premise of the meme was that if one is not willing to say, “black lives matter,” preferring to say, “all lives matter,” then, that person is not paying attention to Jesus’ parable of the lost sheep in Luke 15. You know, ninety-nine were safe; only one was lost. Therefore, the one must matter to a degree the others do not. While the one lost sheep did require a different degree of urgency, what the author leaves out is that Jesus brought the one home and rejoiced. The text is about salvation. But, even if one allows for such a tortured application of a Bible story, the idea is that the lost sheep is restored to the safety of the fold. We see no evidence that the shepherd intended to “disrupt” the existing safety paradigm for the whole one-hundred by tearing down the fold, because the one had a difficult experience.

The meme author’s defense was that Jesus would never respond to a person’s pain with a cliché such as “all lives matter,” that effectively dismisses that sufferer’s pain. I can accept that as far as it goes. However, drawing upon one’s own subjective assessment of what Jesus may or may not say or do carries no more biblical authority than the original mishandling of the text. Apparently, if someone said to Jesus, “black lives matter,” He would only answer, “Of course they do,” so as to not cause greater pain.

This is what we can know: Jesus, the embodiment of Truth, would say the right thing at the right time in any and every circumstance. Indeed, He would never cause needless pain; “a bruised reed, he will not break.” But, if someone came to Jesus, trying to enlist Him into a cause, He might say, “Who made me an arbiter between you and your brother?” Or, He might draw that person into greater eternal truth with a parable. If He knew they were being manipulative and insincere, He might completely disarm them with a brilliant question. Jesus knew what was in a man AND He embodied all truth. That is quite an advantage when responding to situations on the fly. All we can do, in whatever circumstance we find ourselves, is to try to balance whatever wisdom and compassion we have, while crying out for divine help in regard to the compassion and wisdom from above that we need.

Having said that, I have never heard one of the victim’s survivors in one of these recent incidents plead with people to support BLM or to even take up the habit of reciting the slogan. It may have happened, but I would suspect exploitation if it did. The insistence that people embrace that slogan at the exclusion of any alternative tends to come from activists (black and white), celebrities, athletes, panderers as well as some genuinely good-hearted folks and loved ones who cannot quite trust others to think for themselves.

If, for you, saying “all lives matter,” is intended to be a dismissal of another person’s pain, then, do better! That is not why I prefer it. If black lives must matter at the exclusion of other lives mattering, that’s a problem, and I won’t sign up. And, if saying, “black lives matter” or “all lives matter” is the only option I am given, then until a better slogan comes along, I will choose the latter because I want nothing to do with a political movement that advertises some very hellish values. I choose “all lives matter” because it is inclusive and because it is true. Relegating every individual to either Team Villain or Team Victim is of no value at all. It only fuels the resentment, destroys dialogue and renders genuine reconciliation impossible.

So, What Lives DO Matter?

Do I believe that black lives matter? Do I support Black Lives Matter (BLM)? Obviously, these are two questions though some would lead you to believe that they are only one. To the former I can only answer with a clear and unambiguous, “Absolutely!” To the latter, I can only answer with a clear and unambiguous, “Absolutely not!” There is no conflict afoot here. One question speaks to a value; the other to a dubious political movement. These are two very distinct questions that cultural manipulators and societal exploiters seem determined to conflate. Do not let them. As matters unfold, one topic has very little to do with the other.

Of course, black lives matter. Black lives are the result of the breath of God breathed into fellow human beings who just happen to have more melanin than I do. Life is not something any biologist has yet figured out how to duplicate in a lab. Science has introduced great advancements for the prolonging of life and for the advancement of its quality. In ICUs, ERs, and even at accident scenes, medical procedures often reignite function into bodily systems that have briefly ceased. But, no scientist, mad or otherwise, has ever simply bestowed life upon something that was never alive.

Life comes from God. Obviously, this betrays the fact that I am not particularly “woke” in that it is the same argument I would apply to the notion that “all lives matter”; red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight. (And yes, that includes “blue lives” too.)  Life is precious because we cannot replace it. It is why warehousing elderly Covid 19 patients in nursing homes, where we knew the most vulnerable among us reside, was, at best, a foolish blunder and, one can only hope, not a sinister social engineering ploy. Of course, if the decision-makers responsible cannot confess to the one, they could never confess to the other.

God as the Author of life is the simple reason that abortion remains the defining evil of our age. Sadly, even many believers seem to be nodding off to this reality. No amount of societal acceptance will make our present culture of abortion anything but evil. If that seems off-topic, I can only say, “Life matters or it does not.” By the way, you do know that abortion is responsible for the extermination of exponentially more black lives than cops ever could be. That was the “planned” part of Margaret Sanger’s movement, which became Planned Parenthood. Sanger’s positions on controlling the black population are very easy to find. Don’t simply react. Research.

“All lives matter.” Somehow, in this topsy-turvy world, this has become an insensitive and controversial thing to say. People are losing their jobs over it. A particularly “woke” and typically narcissistic celebrity recently announced that people who say this need to be “educated.” I truly believe that all lives matter, simply because we cannot duplicate God’s miracle. Those who are saying all lives matter ARE saying that black lives matter. The movement known as BLM, on the other hand, is a totally different category.

BLM is founded upon a number of dubious narratives: 1) While every life lost in a confrontation with the police is tragic – justified, accidental or homicidal – such killings appear to be anecdotal even though the rhetoric of BLM insists that such killings are epidemic. Statistical reality does not support this. One celebrity in the widely-panned video, “I Take Responsibility,” claimed, “Black people are being slaughtered in the streets.” (Presumably, this is at the hands of the police.) If that premise was even within the stratosphere of reality, protest organizers would have many more instances to draw from … and they would. 2) BLM caught traction in the aftermath of the killing of a young man who was attempting to take a police officer’s firearm. The accompanying cry of BLM proponents, “Don’t shoot,” turned out to be fabricated, but that did not keep it from being perpetuated.

Best scenario: BLM has allowed itself to be appropriated by anarchists, fascists and looters. Worst scenario: The brain-trusts of BLM openly promote anarchy, fascism and looting. Supporters of the movement, some of them among the media, seem to endorse the violence as though that can accomplish anything other than to fuel rage in return and deepen the divisions. My son has a Facebook friend that I don’t mind calling out as a left-wing nutcase.  I asked him why he never responds to her. He does not want to get blocked because he finds her to be an amusing curiosity. She made the point that a few cars and buildings burned is a “small price to pay” for the injustices being addressed. She is not the only person that has made this irresponsible argument. In some minds, justice can somehow be served by the destruction and looting of the businesses of bystanders, many of whom are black entrepreneurs. She appears, as have others, to have ceased making such foolish arguments now that the body count of bystanders, many of them black, has begun to mount.

Predictably, corporations, politicians and networks are pandering to BLM with all sorts of empty and symbolic gestures.  An NFL quarterback was coerced into apologizing for voicing his disagreement over kneeling for the national anthem. (I don’t actually connect the dots myself between kneeling for a military-themed anthem and this particular grievance.) A Division I college football coach has apologized for wearing a t-shirt with the logo of a conservative-leaning news corporation whose critics feel that it is a little too favorable in its coverage to the President. While I loathe the fascist strong-arming and the speech-suppressing pressure by those claiming to be offended, I am utterly embarrassed for these two men who apologized for daring to hold a point-of-view that is not determined to be “woke.”

So, how should unjust killings by the police be handled? They should be against the law. (Oh, that’s right, they are.) The violators should be arrested and appropriately charged. (I heard that happened as well. In fact, it happened with such lightning quickness that the possibility is very real that over-charging and failing to wait for an autopsy could jeopardize the outcome preferred by many.) If convicted, the guilty party should pay for his crime. (I suspect that will happen as well.)

My point is very simple. Equal application of the law is the best remedy for injustice that any system can offer. Inventing special categories of crimes only muddy the issue and exacerbate tribalism. Where there is injustice, justice must be pursued. Identifying bad cops before they become empowered and having a very real discussion about tactics and methods may very well be in order. However, vilifying every police officer for the action of one or a few is as mindless, knee-jerk, hateful, prejudiced and unjust as would be making sweeping generalizations about ANY segment of the population. And, just to complete the rant: Defunding police departments is stupid, and no society can ever be safe if that which is utterly stupid social policy cannot be condemned as “utterly stupid.”

Even I think I sound like a right-wing zealot. If you knew my history, you would find that very ironic. For all the years I was in ministry, the one thing I caught the single most heat over was my reluctance to be political or to turn services intended for the worship of the living God into patriotic rallies when they coincided with patriotic holidays. But, this transcends mere politics. Our days are becoming too absurd and too dangerous. It’s just a little hard to say nothing. If we become a society driven by emotion and tribalism, wholly indifferent to data, we will never again even sniff the dream of the founders, “to form a more perfect union."

The Best Defense against a Bluff

On Sunday, December 22, the FX network premiered its new take on Charles Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol.” In passing, I saw a visual that struck me as odd, but I was not in a position to settle in and watch. Curious, I read a little about the new production. The critics called it “gritty,” uniform in their warnings that this interpretation was not at all reminiscent of the Muppet’s version. I read a little more. The developers claimed that nuances were drawn from “deeper readings” of the text, paragraphs here and there that are often overlooked. These allegedly served to inspire some of the additional material in the movie.

I decided to embark on a little experiment. I would listen to Dicken’s original on an audiobook, not a play nor a dramatization. It would take a little over three hours, but I drive an hour to work so I knew I could fit it in. Then, I would watch the FX presentation in its entirety. You see, that particular rhetoric about “a deeper reading” triggers me for reasons that will soon become evident.

I listened carefully to the audiobook. Then, on Christmas Eve, I watched the movie. Suffice it to say, I did not pick up on any paragraphs in the book that so much as remotely hinted about: 1) Jacob Marley’s interactions in purgatory with the Ghost of Christmas Past; 2) Scrooge and Marley’s complicity in scores of negligent homicides due to their indifference to essential industrial repairs amongst their scores of holdings; 3) the deliverance of a young Scrooge from a pattern of sexual abuse by his schoolmaster when his older sister, Lottie (a wholly- fabricated character), rescued Ebenezer at gunpoint; 4) Scrooge’s sexual extortion of Mrs. Cratchitt as she desperately seeks funds to pay for Tiny Tim’s life-saving surgery; 5) Mrs. Cratchitt’s repeated lies to poor old Bob in covering up her act of desperation; 6) the idea that the visitations to Scrooge by the three spirits were initiated by some vague conjuring from an angry Mrs. Cratchitt.

Additionally, sentiments and actions were attributed to characters that actually violated the text. An exasperated Fred never told his wife that he was through with inviting Uncle Scrooge to Christmas dinner. In Dicken’s original, the nephew explicitly said that he would keep inviting his uncle every year. Young Scrooge’s abusive father did not bail on the family so that the way home for Ebenezer was made possible. In the book, Scrooge’s younger sister said, “Father has become so much kinder.” Scrooge did not shut down his business at the end of the story and wander off into an unclear future. Rather, Dickens wrote that he became like a “second father” to Tiny Tim. And, of course, all kinds of events and words were placed in inaccurate settings.

Now, before anyone scolds me about the nature of poetic license or artistic liberty, let me say, “I get that.” So, script writers, just tell me that you took such liberties and not that you read Dickens “more deeply.” The latter comes across as a bluff. I was reminded of certain “constitutional scholars” I heard in recent weeks. I take nothing away from scholarship, but I think I have a fairly well-developed radar for bluffs. Constitutional scholarship does not mean that one’s opinion on this or that matter should invoke awe in others, especially when the others know what is in the constitution. That is a mere bluff.

The greatest defense against being the victim of a bluff is very simple. KNOW THE SOURCE MATERIAL!

Perhaps, nothing too critical hinges on whether or not a remake of a Dicken’s classic is particularly accurate. So, I will tell you at this point why claims of “deeper readings” are such triggers for me. Christianity today is being distorted, misrepresented and undermined because too many believers choose to be ignorant of their source material. In the meantime, new scholarship, new approaches to meanings of words, new alleged archeological findings and new treatments of historical contexts are turning traditional Christian values and virtues on their head. Marriage is being redefined. Every biblical standard for human sexuality is being cast aside. Abortion is virtuous. Any sincerely-held belief will lead a person to heaven. Apparently, when Jesus said, “Judge not,” He meant that neither He nor His disciples should ever exercise the audacity to simply distinguish between light and darkness, sin and virtue, or right and wrong.

I expect the world to oppose and undermine the church. I am angered by wolves who misrepresent truth with their claims of scholarship and deeper readings. I am nothing short of mesmerized by believers who are so disinterested in their source material that they will fall for and often parrot what they hear, simply because they lack discernment, that is, a scripturally-informed radar for bluffs.