The Underground Youth Ministry

Out of all the serious long articles that have been on this blog, there is only one blogger that makes them short! Here it goes!

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The person who keeps it short and sweet,
Kaleb

(6 real sentences long. YEAH!)

 GUEST ARTICLE written by Joshua Bertsch, Underground member

From Frank Schaeffer, son of the late Francis Schaeffer (printed in numerous publications, including The Huffington Post):

“My late father and I share the blame (with many others) for the murder of Dr. George Tiller, the abortion doctor gunned down on Sunday. Until I got out of the religious right (in the mid-1980s) and repented of my former hate-filled rhetoric I was both a leader of the so-called pro-life movement and a part of a Republican Party hate machine masquerading as the moral conscience of America.

“In the late 1970s my evangelical pro-life leader father Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop (who soon become Surgeon General in the Reagan administration) went on the road with me taking the documentary antiabortion film series I produced and directed ( Whatever Happened to the Human Race?) to the evangelical public. The series and companion book eventually brought millions of heretofore non-political evangelical Americans into the antiabortion crusade. We personally also got people like Jerry Falwell, Ronald Reagan and countless Republican leaders involved in the ‘issue.’

“In the early 80s my father followed up with a book that sold over a million copies called A Christian Manifesto. In certain passages he advocated force if all other methods for rolling back the abortion ruling of Roe v. Wade failed. He compared America and its legalized abortion to Hitler’s Germany and said that whatever tactics would have been morally justified in removing Hitler would be justified in trying to stop abortion. I said the same thing in a book I wrote (A Time For Anger) that right wing evangelicals made into a best seller. For instance Dr. James Dobson (of the Focus On the Family radio show) gave away over 100,000 copies.

“Like many writers of moral/political/religious theories my father and I would have been shocked that someone took us at our word, walked into a Lutheran Church and pulled the trigger on an abortionist. But even if the murderer never read Dad’s or my words, we helped create the climate that made this murder likely to happen.

“In fact that very thing has happened before. In 1994, Dr. John Bayard Britton and one of his volunteer escorts were shot and killed outside an abortion clinic in Pensacola, Florida. Paul Hill, a former minister, was convicted of the killings and executed in 2003. Paul Hill was an avid follower of my father’s.

“Hyperbole from the pulpit from religious leaders, be it from my father or from President Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Wright, is par for the course. But once in a while someone ‘does something’ about it and then everyone says that they were only speaking metaphorically or ’spiritually’ when they called for violence or for the overthrow the state or when they said things like ‘God damn America!’ or that ‘abortionists are murderers like Hitler!’

“Angry speech has become the norm in American religion from both the right and the left. Words are spoken which — when taken seriously — lead directly to violence by the unhinged and/or the truly committed.

“When evangelicals on the right call President Obama a socialist, a racist, anti-American, an abortionist, not a real American, and, echoing the former Vice President, someone who is weakening America’s defenses and making us less safe, the logical conclusion is violence. If you take these words literally you might pull the trigger to ‘make America safe’ and/or free us from communism or to even protect us from — what some ‘Christian’ leaders claim — Obama as the Antichrist.

“Contributing to an extreme and sometimes violent climate has not only been the fault of the antiabortion crusaders. The Roe v. Wade decision went too far, too fast and was too sweeping. I believe that abortion should be legal. But I also believe that it should be re-regulated according to fetal development. It’s the late term abortions that horrify most people. And for the sake of keeping abortion legal adjustments need to be made. Roe is far too all or nothing (as I explain in my book Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All — or Almost All — of It Back). As I say in my book today I believe that abortion should be legal but more regulated than Roe allows. I also think that we should do what President Obama calls for: use sex education and contraceptive distribution and programs to help women and children in a way that results in less abortions.

“But the reason this issue will never go away is that the Roe ruling was an over broad court decision that makes abortion legal even in the last weeks of pregnancy. Take away the pictures of all those dead late term fetuses and everything changes emotionally. Democracy and civil debate is messy but if abortion had been argued state-by-state abortion would be legal in almost all our states today and probably the laws would be written more like those of Europe, where late-term abortions (of the kind Dr. Tiller specialized in performing) are illegal and/or highly discouraged.

“The same hate machine I was part of is still attacking all abortionists as ‘murderers.’ And today once again the ‘pro-life’ leaders are busy ducking their personal responsibility for people acting on their words. The people who stir up the fringe never take responsibility. But I’d like to say on this day after a man was murdered in cold blood for preforming abortions that I — and the people I worked with in the religious right, the Republican Party, the pro-life movement and the Roman Catholic Church, all contributed to this killing by our foolish and incendiary words.

“I am very sorry.”
 
The above is an article written in the wake of George Tiller’s murder by Frank Schaeffer, son of the late Francis Schaeffer.  As you can clearly see, Frank has no problem identifying the people he believes to be responsible for Tiller’s murder: the whole pro-life community. 

Frank makes no bones about his desire to muzzle (or perhaps outlaw?*) pro-life speech, which he calls “hate-filled rhetoric,” “foolish and incendiary words,” and is all part of “a Republican party hate machine.”  In order to protect abortionists, pro-lifers should cease speaking out on abortion, and especially avoid calling abortion “murder,” and all those who have done so are at least partially responsible for Tiller’s death.

But here is where an interesting twist enters the discussion: is Frank Schaeffer responsible if someone reads his words and then goes and kills a pro-life leader?  By his own standards, yes.  If anyone who has ever spoken out against abortion is culpable in Tiller’s murder for creating “the climate that made this murder likely to happen,”  surely Frank Schaeffer is contributing to a climate that could precipitate violence against pro-life individuals. 

But there’s more.  I wonder what Frank Schaeffer would have said to someone like Martin Luther King, Jr., who, while not advocating violence, certainly made violence against whites more likely by speaking out against racism.  Would Frank Schaeffer hold Dr. King responsible for violence done to whites by enraged blacks?

The fact is, the truth may often be offensive and even contribute to a climate where violence against certain people becomes more likely.  However, to refuse to denounce the Jewish Holocaust or racism for fear of inciting violence against the Germans or whites would be morally unjustifiable.  To squelch the truth in an attempt to protect abortionists at the expense of 3,300 innocent unborn children every day is wrong.
 
*This is speculation on my part.

Last night, on my journey to the house of a friend in South Bend, I was struck by a church marquee.  It read something like the following: “We do limit the power of God by reducing him to our capacities.”

The statement alone sent the wheels spinning in my head.  Then, when I noticed the name on the building—that of a Unitarian congregation—I was struck by the irony.

Consider the following passages:

“Hear, O Isreal: The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deut 6:4).

“To those who are elect exiles . . . according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood” (I Pet 1:1-2).

What is the Trinitarian response to these and similar passages?  They understand that God is one but that there are three persons in the Godhead—Father, Son, Spirit.  The Trinitarian accepts these three as coequal, coeternal in spite of the fact that there is no analogy or example in nature by which this divine mystery can be illustrated.

The Unitarian, by contrast, refutes this divine mystery, insisting that there be only one person in the Godhead.  They have no room for the doctrine of the Three-in-One.

Which of these two is limiting God to human capacities?

Indeed, the Trinitarian accepts that “the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God; and yet not three Gods but one God” (Athanasian Creed) even though this is beyond full comprehension by finite minds. 

Moreover, while the Trinitarian does not reject this simply because it is beyond absolute comprehension, he neither holds to it for the mere fact that it is mystery; and this is the deeper issue with the statement of the Unitarian marquee.  For, indeed the Orthodox Christian holds to the Trinity not because he finds it appealing but because this is how God has revealed Himself to man.

God has revealed himself in human language to human persons.  He bent down to man and described himself in a way we can comprehend.  Had he not done this, we would still be stumbling blindly in the dark lacking all understanding.

The statement on the marquee of this heretical group, however, would have us leave human capacities behind in our efforts to know God.  Doing so, however, would mean all objective statements we have of God would also be left behind.  What would be left?  Certainly not any God we can actually know, for there could be no declarations as to God’s goodness, immutability, justice, etc.

Furthermore, even something as difficult to comprehend as the Trinity is aided by human capacities, for while one may fail to say exactly what the Three-in-One is, he can advance along this effort in saying what it is not.

The engaged Christian, therefore, accepts the authority of God’s revelation and uses his own capacities to wrestle with it.  This is neither an effort in reducing God nor in elevating man’s capacities. 

Indeed, it is simply the pursuit of a genuine believer seeking to know God.

The infamous, old-guard late-term abortionist Tiller has died.  24 hours later, this is no longer news.

I was at lunch with several of my pro-life compatriots (AKA “domestic terrorists” according to head of Homeland Security Napolitano) when the word was released. 

Amidst the hypocrisy of the interviews (e.g., “[Tiller] was a good Christian man,” said one woman) and our own revisiting of why such an act cannot be morally justified was a lurking dread.  For, we knew what was coming—and today it’s in print.

“We know the identities of [the killer's] accomplices,” writes Kansas City Star columnist Mike Hendricks.  “They include everyone who has ever called Tiller’s late-term abortion clinic a murder mill” (KansasCity.com)

Add to this reports that Attorney General Eric Holder has ordered United States Marshals to provide extra security for some abortion clinics and doctors.  “The Marshals rarely guard private citizens outside the federal court system, but the attorney general can order such protection” (KTVN.com).  And, he has.

Bonnie Erbe, opinion writer for US News & World Report writes, “Let George Tiller’s murder be the last straw. It is time for America’s pro-choice majority to stop standing idly by as extreme so-called pro-life advocates murder obstetrician-gynecologists (OB/GYNs) who are providing women with the legal right to terminate pregnancies” (USNEWS.com)

Erbe then carefully notes that she is separating “extremist pro-life groups” from the mainstream.  What is her definition of the extremists?  “People who refer to abortion as “baby-killing” and other inflammatory rhetoric” (USNEWS.com).

We knew it would come.  Well, here it is.

Welcome to the fallout.

Pro-abortion organizations and biased media are in a frenzy.  Their excitement is palpable.  It’s almost as if this is too good to be true.  Just when opinion polls were showing a majority of Americans moving in opposition to abortion, just when the Supreme Court nomination process gets rolling, they are given a treasure.  There are many ways to spin this.  One need only pick an angle and run with it.

Not surprisingly, the one they’ve chosen is to play on the fear of terror.  Painting with a broad brush still wet with the paint of Napolitano’s domestic terrorism alert, they’ve begun to lump all pro-life men and women into the same category as one man who acted out of his own volition.

The cries of “accomplice” and sending in of the marshals fans the fires of conspiracy and stirs the soup of intrigue.  The faithful who stand outside the many abortion clinics across the country with their signs, their rosaries—quietly praying or seeking to engage the women entering the facilities—are being declared enemies of humanity.  Not only are they opposed to such an “inalienable right” as abortion, but they are vigilantes who may suddenly pull a gun.

I am not surprised by the spin.  I am, however, taken aback by the sheer audacity of some.

Hendricks describes the “pro-life accomplices” as “groups that fomented hate toward a man who, rightly or wrongly, believed he was serving a noble purpose . . . Hate. Not heated opposition. Not strong disagreement . . . the kind of hate that would prompt some maniac to take a gun into a church and shoot a man to death in front of friends and family.”

Hendricks shrugs off Tiller’s long career as serving a purpose “rightly or wrongly.”  Hendricks and others like him do not really care what Tiller was doing, as long as he firmly believed in it.  What really matters is the one bullet that pierced his flesh, not the thousands of fingers, toes and limbs he pulled from women’s wombs.

Indeed, what greater salvation in the public eye could come to the abortion industry than the martyrdom of one of the most infamous late-term killers?  In fact, late-term abortions count for a fraction of America’s abortions.  It’s an affair which has largely fallen out of favor in the public eye, perhaps due to the line drawings and open discussion during the not so long ago days prior to the partial-birth abortion ban.

By his death, though, Tiller is forever exonerated of all charges and vindicated in his “noble purpose.”

His name has already been given the title of “American Hero.”  (See above photo from Kansas candlelight vigil in his honor, published in the Guardian).

Really?  Tearing babies apart within their mothers’ wombs is all it takes to be venerated as a hero in this country?

All of this of course opens the door for the pro-lifers already fearful of being seen as “extremists” to shrink into the corners as they are threatened with being painted as “domestic terrorists.”

National Organization for Women President Kim Gandy is quoted as saying, “Bringing the killers to justice is not enough – the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security must root out and prosecute as domestic terrorists and violent racketeers the criminal enterprise that has organized and funded criminal acts for decades” (WND.com)

Note the pluralities: killers, terrorists, racketeers, criminal acts.  The goal is to portray this as a sweep of killings, as a movement of terrorists, rather than an isolated individual and an isolated act.

Gandy continues, “We call on the new attorney general, Eric Holder, and head of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano to treat these murders in the same way they would treat politically-motivated domestic terrorism of any other kind and put the full resources of their two departments behind that effort.”

One would like to write off Gandy’s claims as that of an extreme pro-abortion voice amidst the cooler mainstream.  However, the fact that Attorney General Holder has already called in the marshals causes one to wonder just how deep the reaction of this fallout may go.

No time is being wasted in linking this to the ongoing “hate speech” debate.  Responding to Gandy’s call on Holder and Napolitano, Bonnie Erbe writes, “That’s all well and fine, but much, much more needs to be done, including banning inflammatory rhetoric that incites the unbalanced to violence, and holding the inciters responsible for the murders they cause.”

We are in the thick of it.

One comfort we can take from this fallout is simply the fact that they need it.  Their rush to capitalize on Tiller’s death is evidence of perhaps deep-seated fear that they are not in as much control as they thought.  Having a pro-abortion President and being in control of both houses of Congress has still not secured total victory for them.

Because we are still here.

Why are we still here?  Because we have truth on our side.

Hendricks closes his opinion piece with the following: “The bullet that killed George Tiller also shattered the moral underpinnings of the movement that inspired its firing.”

Leaving aside for a moment the issue that it is incorrect to say the greater pro-life movement inspired the bullet, Mr. Hendricks is simply wrong that this isolated act has shattered the moral underpinnings of our movement.

We do not rise and fall on isolated events.  We do not base our success on public opinion.

We march on because we are faithful—to the truth, to the children, to God.

And that is why, even in the midst of all of this fallout, we will continue to march.

Our vindication will come one day—whether in this age or in the one to come.

GUEST ARTICLE written by Joshua Bertsch, Underground member

Throughout the scientific community, there has been a buzz of excitement over “Ida,” a fossilized skeleton discovered in Germany.  Naturally, it didn’t take long before the media started throwing around the term, “missing link.” 
 
Did I mention that Ida was a lemur?
 
Understandably, some scientists have been very vocal in their criticism of the media for categorizing Ida as a “missing link.”  Chris Beard, a curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, said the following: “It’s not a missing link; it’s not even a terribly close relative to monkeys, apes and humans, which is the point they’re trying to make.”
 
It is important to note that many scientists speculate that Ida may be some sort of intermediate fossil between lemurs and monkeys.  However, Ida is by no stretch of the imagination the half-ape, half-human fossil that scientists have been desperately seeking for decades.
 
The truth is, paleontology has yet to reveal a single convincing intermediate fossil.  Niles Eldredge, an evolutionary paleontologist, once said,
 
“No wonder paleontologists shied away from evolution for so long.  It never seems to happen.  Assiduous collecting up cliff faces yields zigzags, minor oscillations, and the very occasional slight accumulation of change…over millions of years, at a rate too slow to account for all the prodigious change that has occurred in evolutionary history.  When we do see the introduction of evolutionary novelty, it usually shows up with a bang, and often with no firm evidence that the fossils did not evolve elsewhere!  Evolution cannot forever be going on somewhere else.  Yet that’s how the fossil record has struck many a forlorn paleontologist looking to learn something about evolution.”
 
This does not jive with evolutionary theory.  There should be intermediate fossils by the museum-full, not just the occasional lemur-monkey*.
 
So, how do we explain the lack of intermediate and/or “missing link” fossils.  I have a hypothesis:  maybe, just maybe, there aren’t any intermediate fossils to find.
 
*Once again, this is purely speculative at this point.  So far, we have no solid evidence indicating that Ida is an intermediate fossil between lemurs and monkeys.

- Joshua Bertsch

Sam Harris, a leading atheist writer—and thereby influential member of the “four horsemen” of neo-atheism—has come under fire for a statement made in his book The End of Faith:

The link between belief and behavior raises the stakes considerably. Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them.  (pp. 52-53)

This statement comes within the context of a discussion on the role belief plays in directing behavior.  One’s beliefs lead one to act in a certain way—or at least they ought to do so.  Sometimes those beliefs are held onto so strongly that mere persuasion will fail to win the person over, and he could be prompted to act in violent manners—such as in the case of militant Islam.  Therefore, some ideas are so dangers that killing may be permissible.

Harris has defended this statement by arguing that it is the link between beliefs and behavior which makes beliefs dangerous—not the beliefs themselves.  Osama bin Laden, Harris explains, has perhaps not directly killed any one person, but has propagated beliefs which has led to the deaths of countless innocents.*

Regardless of the link between behavior and belief, one cannot escape the fact that Harris writes here that certain ideas “are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them.”  He does not write that only when those ideas lead to abhorrent behavior may the person’s life be taken.  Thus, we must conclude that he would not only allow for the killing of the Islamic marauder but also the one who simply believes non-Islamic peoples are infidels worthy of death yet does not act upon those beliefs.

The question comes down to this: can a person be killed for his ideas because of what they are and not because of the actions to which the ideas lead him?

Consider this: if Hitler had only believed Jews were inferior but never ordered the genocide thereof, would it have been permissible for one to kill him?

If a young white boy growing up in Civil War-era America was indoctrinated with the notion that Blacks are “non-persons” and believed it—though he never killed a Black or otherwise acted upon these beliefs—would one have been justified in taking his life?

Ideas do have consequences, but until one acts upon those beliefs, how can he be held responsible by his fellow man?

Or, more horrifyingly, if there are certain beliefs which equal a death sentence, who is the judge who will decide which beliefs are or are not worthy of execution?

Might one be executed for believing his religion is superior to that of another?

Might one be executed for telling others that an abortion kills a human person?

Might one be executed for saying that certain sexual practices are perverse?

Allowing for killing because of beliefs smacks not simply of intolerance but also of communist cleansing a la Stalin.  What happens to the free exchange of ideas, the open marketplace of discussion if certain notions suddenly become worthy of death?

This is not only a discomforting thought, it is a terrifying notion. 

What would happen if Harris were to become the judge who determines which beliefs are allowed and which are not in this “free society?”  The masses would become the terrified animals of the fictional classic Animal Farm.  Open discussion would die—as would any person who dared to think outside of the neo-atheistic box.

It’s a dangerous idea—a dangerous idea, indeed. 

But, I wouldn’t kill him for it.

* I cannot agree with the assertion Harris makes that it is Osama’s beliefs and not actions which lead to the deaths of innocents.  While he may not fly an airplane into a building full of people, if he were to order another person to do so, he would be guilty of giving the order.  This is not only believing something but acting upon it by ordering the deaths of others—whether or not he sticks the knife into the person’s heart himself.

One of the greatest injustices we do to our young people is to ask them to be conservative.  Christianity today is not conservative, but revolutionary.  To be conservative today is to miss the whole point, for conservatism means standing in the flow of the status quo, and the status quo no longer belongs to us.  Today we are a minority.  If we want to be fair, we must teach the young to be revolutionaries, revolutionaries against the status quo.

     - Francis A. Schaeffer, “The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century”

Sometimes labels can be helpful.  To say one is theologically conservative, for example, is often understood as a bold opposition to the theologically liberal swing and all of its anti-supernatural biases, and thus it is a useful, fitting title.  However, sometimes labels can be misleading.

To be generally “conservative,” as Schaeffer notes above, suggests one is trying to conserve that which is the status quo.  This is something of which we ought to be exceedingly leery. 

What is the status quo of Christianity today?  Men who simply “believe” without any solid object in which to place their faith?  Others who have swallowed with delight the prosperity gospel and declare “faith” a power-source? 

The status quo Christian (in 21st Century America) makes comments such as the following:

“Who cares if Jesus and Mary Magdalene had sexual relations?  He’s still my god.”

“Try Jesus.  You might like him.”

“Christianity is what works for me.  Maybe it’s not for everyone.”

“Your expectations release God’s power to work in your life.”

“Why does it really matter if Jesus rose from the dead?”

This is not something we want to preserve.  Theological liberalism, post-modernism, prosperity-gospel preaching: all of these are prevalent trends in the “Christian” community today.  The status quo does not belong to the God-fearing, heritage-honoring, hermeneutically-trained Christian.  Rather, it belongs to the myopic, to the self-seeking, to the truth-rejecting.

How many Christians claim the name of “Christ” yet live as practical athiests, as if God had no role in this world, as if man had not been given specific mandates which he is to carry out in his lifetime?

The time has not come simply to plod onward in the wayward steps of a culture gone wrong.  No.  Now has come the time for revolution—a revolution grounded upon truth, rooted deep in the tradition of orthodox Christianity.  It is time for a revolution which begins in the salvation of man and continues outward to the redemption of the world.

We do not need more Christians who shout “Hallelujah” as the central tenets of our faith are destroyed.  Instead, we need young men and women who are willing to stand up when the heretic denounces the resurrection, perverts the Trinity with a modalist view, or raises man up with the humanistic declaration that we are basically good.

We do not need more Christians who simply sing louder as the train carries not Jews to Auschwitz but pre-born children to the slaughter house.  We need young men and women who take seriously the charge to love their fellow man in truth and in deed.

We do not need more Christians who are growing fat on luxury and are unwilling to experience discomfort for the name of Christ or to give aid to the downtrodden.

We need revolutionaries—revolutionaries who refuse to be defined by the status quo but instead align themselves squarely with the truth as revealed by God. 

The purpose is not to fight against the culture of today simply for the purpose of fighting.  Rather, the purpose is to treat truth as what it truly is—not simply a fanciful idea or visions of sugar-plums dancing in our heads, but objective statements which do indeed match up with reality and necessarily have implications for our lives.

It is not time for conservativism—for preserving the status quo for the simple purpose of preserving it or out of the nearsighted belief that the status quo somehow still belongs to us.

No.  It is time to be revolutionary.

The central thesis of a book I am currently reading, The Making of Pro-Life Activists, is that it is not necessarily pro-life beliefs which always breed activism.  According to the author, many times it is through the activism—such as demonstrating, marching in DC, praying at abortion clinics—that individuals solidify (or even form) their views.

While I would like to think we all commit ourselves to a certain cause based upon objective moral analysis, this simply is not always the case.  For example, once I held a peaceful pro-life demonstration outside of a rally for a presidential candidate whose favor of abortion on demand is unflinchingly extreme.  As the public poured out of the rally afterward, I noticed a particular girl.  Although she was covered in stickers and clothing singing the praises of the pro-abortion candidate, I recognized her as a girl who’d been a student before at our pro-life training camp.

This young woman had received stellar training in the philosophic and scientific arguments for the humanity and personhood of the pre-born; yet, she had evolved into an aficionado of a pro-abortion presidential candidate.

Afterward, I found myself scratching my head asking, “Why?”

As a youth minister watching droves of teens leaving their faith behind, I find myself asking the same question.

And this is where I think the author of The Making of Pro-Life Activists may be on to something.  Indeed, I wonder what a difference it might have made for that young girl had she not only learned about defending life but also been engaged in activities in which she used  these new skills.

My mind turns to the apostle Peter and the ethical charges of chapter one in his first epistle.  Peter’s ethical charges—such as the commands to holiness and loving of the brethren—follow his theological proclamations.  The theology that is Christianity, therefore, according to Peter will necessarily prompt certain behaviors.

Indeed, does not every world view lead to certain behaviors?  Hitler killed because of his world view.  Harriet Tubman rescued slaves because she believed they were people.   What do Harriet and Hitler have in common?  They put their money where their mouths were.

What would have happened if Hitler had never written Mein Kamp, had never propagated his beliefs?  What if Harriet had simply kept her beliefs of the personhood of the slave to herself?

Not only would our world potentially have been vastly different, but one has to wonder if both Hitler and Harriet might have eventually let go of their beliefs (which would have been good for the former, terribly bad for the latter).

It seems absurd for us to imagine Harriet Tubman thinking slavery wrong yet doing nothing; however, how is this different from the Christian who proclaims Christ rose from the dead yet does nothing to reflect this profound belief with his life?

James said faith without works is dead.  Peter suggested theology will lead to certain behavior.  And yet we have a crop of teens who are being led through the sinner’s prayer only to come to inactivity.  How many “Christians” are no more than a carbon copy of the lost with a quickly applied veneer of Christianese?  They may use words like “Jesus,” “God,” “saved,” but their lives play out with unmistakable similarity to the empty materialism of the fallen West.

While living in France, I learned that the French see religion as a ”personal problem.”  The thought is something like this: You can believe anything you want, just don’t tell me about it; and above all do not allow your beliefs to affect your ethics, politics, etc.

This is crippling the remnant as they are being forced to divorce their action from their beliefs.

How can this lead to anything except for a rejection of those beliefs?

Do we allow our world view to radically alter not only our opinions but also our actions?  If not, we may soon find ourselves among the defectors who unknowingly become starry-eyed fans of others leading droves down a path of depravity.

** What do you think?  What are some ways in which a Christian can back up his or her beliefs with action?

Although certain elements of the phenomenon that is American Idol can be at times unpredictable, there is one thing viewers can count on almost week to week: one singer faltering badly being issued a strong critique by the judges only to respond with something like, “I don’t care.  I had fun.”

With one simple statement, the contestant dispenses with the expert (and sometimes less than expert) criticism of the judges.  What matters is not years of work in the music industry, hours of labor writing songs, or understanding the marketing trends of the day.  Instead, what matters is simply the contestant’s perspective.

Far be it from me to defend each of the American Idol judges.  And, far be it from me to lump all of the contestants into the same narcissistic soup.  However, this trend is somewhat disturbing. 

We are a culture which cannot take criticism.  We often do little more than play lip-service to critique by listening idly before we move on to continue doing our own thing.  Who cares if the song was far off pitch?  I just had fun.

This reflects the deeper problem of our day: subjectivism.  Who cares if I have no reason to reject the resurrection of Christ?  Who cares if you have good reason to believe in absolutes?  I’m having fun, so it doesn’t matter.

When the subjective becomes king, to what can we appeal?  How can Simon Cowell actually tell a singer he was bad if the singer has no concept of bad?

Or, more importantly, how can we tell a culture that it is sinful if it no longer understands the meaning of the word sin?