Charitable Giving: Funding vs. Faith

When I was in Seminary, I had a part time job at Target.  The parent company of Target, Dayton-Hudson Corp., had a relationship with The United Way.  All employees of Dayton-Hudson Corp. were encouraged to contribute to The United Way.  As with most corporations, there was a push to engage the employees with the company culture, and part of that push was to encourage 100% participation in the company charity.  Federal law and company policy prohibited mandatory participation in the charitable giving, but there were contests between the Company Divisions, and the Divisional Managers were pushing the Store Managers hard to solicit contributions.  At the time, the United Way was advertising on all NFL games.  Their spokespeople included (I believe) such NFL stars as John Elway.  Their commercials would show children with Spina Bifida or Down Syndrome; ostensibly, these children were helped by funds collected and distributed by The United Way.

My manager came to me and asked why I wasn't participating in the charity drive.  I beleive that my primary reason for not contributing was purely financial--I was a poor student, a part-time employee earning minimum wage, and I thought that even a one-dollar contribution would have a detrimental effect on my household budget.  But I didn't want to tell the store manager that I was cheap--the Bible encourages giving alms to the poor.  So what I told my manager was that I couldn't support The United Way, a charitable clearing-house, because one of the organizations that they supported was Planned Parenthood.  And one of the "health services" that Planned Parenthood provided was abortions.  As a seminary student, I announced piously, I could not contribute to any charity that funded abortions, no matter what other good things they did.

I was reminded of this experience this week when I heard the controversy about Susan G. Komen defunding Planned Parenthood clinics.  As you know, Susan G. Komen is a charitable foundation dedicated to treatment of and finding a cure for breast cancer.  Much of the money they receive from donors to their cause are channeled directly to clinics that do screenings for breast cancer.  Many of these clinics receive their primary funding from Planned Parenthood.  The clinics probably offer abortions as well as other services, like breast cancer screenings, well woman exams, inoculations and infant formula for babies, and much more.  You would think that the money they get from Susan G. Komen probably offsets the cost of x-ray machines, mammography machines, and lead aprons for the radiology techs to wear.  But you'd be wrong: 90% of the Planned Parenthood clinics do not have the capacity to do breast cancer screenings, because they don't have a mammography machine on site.  So Komen decided they didn't want to subsidize the rest of Planned Parenthood's services, including abortions.

Don't get me wrong.  I believe any non-governmental organization (NGO) is free to give whatever they want to whomever they want, just as the donors to these NGOs are free to contribute or not to contribute.  The problem I have is the government taking my tax dollars and giving grants and aid to countries, organizations, charities and directly to people that I do not  personally support.  And yes, that includes Planned Parenthood.  But as Paul Harvey used to say, here is the REST of the story.

A chain of bookstores called Lifeway Christian Stores (formerly known as Baptist Book Stores) used to sell Bibles with pink covers.  A portion of the sale of these pink Bibles was given to Susan G. Komen for breast cancer research.  When Lifeway Christian Stores found out that Susan G. Komen sent a portion of their funds to Planned Parenthood, they pulled all the copies of their pink Bibles and stopped sending proceeds to Komen.  That was their right.  As a religious retailer, they probably would have lost customers if they hadn't.  If their customers found out that they were indirectly supporting Planned Parenthood, Lifeway Christian Stores would have likely lost sales, not just in pink Bibles, but in other items that they sell, like music CDs, books by Christian authors, and church supplies and vestments (like offering plates and those little plastic communion cups).  As they say, follow the money.  So for their profits as well as their principles, they stopped supporting Komen.

In turn, the Susan G. Komen foundation looked at their internal audits, and decided to stop supporting Planned Parenthood clinics.  This was a more courageous act than the bookstore pulling pink Bibles.  This was acting more out of principle than profit.  Think about it.  The total annual Bible sales from Lifeway may be $1 million.  The portion of those sales specifically linked to Komen had to be less than 10%.  That's $100,000.  In retail, the profit margin on books is generally 40%; so now we're talking $40,000 profit.  And you know that not all the profits went to the charity; if the portion of the profits was 10% of sales, then that was only about $4,000 annually.  If Komen had lost the funding from Lifeway, they surely could have made it up in other areas.  They could have sold more pink wristbands at their Race For The Cure events.  They could have gone to Barnes & Noble and made a deal to sell pink covers of their best-selling books.  They could have done the "safe" thing and not made a big deal of the lost revenue from pink Bibles.

But they didn't.

As much as the World criticizes public officials and businesses and charities for "Follow the Money" policies that end up being unpopular, you would think this would not have made the news.  Other companies, like Green companies, are often lauded for holding on to principles over profits.  A national shoe company gets lots of media exposure, because for every pair of shoes they sell in America, they give away a pair of shoes in a third world country.  But, as it turns out, the World is fickle.  The media has accused Komen of being political, not principled.  Someone has found a link between the chairwoman of Susan G. Komen and George W. Bush.  Apparently they are friends, and any friend of the Bushes has to be an enemy of the media.

My hat is off to the Susan G. Komen Foundation.  They chose not to forego the few thousand bucks from Lifeway Christian Stores, and instead stopped funding an organization that funds an abominable practice. (By the way, a woman I work with told me, "I am not a proponent of abortion, but I think that women should have the choice in cases of rape and incest; just not as a means of birth control."  I asked her, out of the 3 million abortions performed last year, how many were a result of rape or incest? Why isn't there a law that says in order to have an abortion approved, a police report must be filed accusing some man of rape or incest?  If everyone who said "I support it only for rape and incest" really meant what they said, then there should be just such a law.  The woman I work with was not amused; she walked off without saying anything.)  If the media wants to paint this as political, that is their business.  It may sell newspapers and increase ratings for talking heads on CNN, but it has little to do with reality.

God Forgives, Sin is Long Gone

As far as the east is from the west, so far he has removed our transgressions from us.   (Psalm 103.12)

A favorite children's story I know is called "Seven In One Blow."  It starts out with a tailor who is working on a belt.  There are so many flies buzzing about his shop that the tailor gets frustrated and lashes his belt out onto the window sill.  When he picks up the belt, there are seven dead flies on the sill.  So the tailor inscribes the belt, "Seven In One Blow", signifying that he has killed seven flies at one time.  He closes up the shop, and sets out to seek his fortune.  He takes with him some cheese in his knapsack, and the belt around his waist.  As he meets other people on the road, they give him a wide berth, because they interpret the inscription on his belt to mean that he once killed seven men with a single blow of his fist.  As the story progresses, the tailor lies down on the grass and takes a nap.  A bird flies down and lights on the ground beside him.  The tailor wakes up and snags the bird, and puts it alive in his knapsack.  In time the tailor meets a giant.  The giant sees the boast on the tailor's belt, and challenges the tailor to feats of strength.  The tailor challenges the giant to pick up a rock and squeeze it until liquid comes out.  The stupid giant picks up the nearest large rock, and squeezes with all his might.  No matter how hard he squeezes, he cannot get liquid to come out of the rock.  He finally gives up, and the tailor reaches into his knapsack and pulls out the cheese.  He starts to squeeze the cheese, and soon the whey seeps out of the cheesecloth.  The giant is impressed, but wants a rematch.  The tailor doubles down on the bet, and challenges the giant to throw a rock as high in the air as he can.  The giant takes the rock and throws it straight up with all his might.  The tailor counts to 700 and the rock finally comes falling back to the earth.  Then the tailor reaches into his knapsack and pulls out the small, white bird.  He tosses the bird in the air and it flies away.  The giant counts to 700, then to 750, then to 800, and the "rock" never comes back to earth.

The moral of the story, besides to never take another man's bet, is that cleverness outperforms strength, or something like that.  There is more to the story, but that is not why I brought it up.  I was reminded of this story last week when I read Leviticus chapter 16, which in turn reminded me of a similar passage in Leviticus 14.

Let me explain.

The book of Leviticus documents the commands of God to the Levitical priests.  These words were given to Moses after he gave the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, but before He led them accross the Jordan River into the Promised Land.  The book outlines the expectations of God for sacrifices and other acts of worship.  With any given situation, there were sacrifices involved.  Chapter 14 deals with what to do if you discover an infectious skin disease.  Clearly, if a man had a skin infection, it may have been contagious.  Since there were no doctors in the camp that could tell whether it was contagious or not, the infected person was to show himself to the priests.  The priest would set  him outside the camp for seven days, and if the skin infection cleared up, then he could present himself to the priest again, and the priest would require a sacrifice from him before he could rejoin his family. 

In most cases, it was assumed that the infectious skin disease was a result of sin in the man's life.  So the man who was healed of the infection (and thus forgiven for his sins) was to present two birds to the priest for sacrifice.  One of the birds would be killed by the priest.  The other bird would be taken alive and dipped into the blood of the bird that had been sacrificed.  The priest would sprinkle the man that had been cleansed of the infection seven times, and then the bird that had been dipped into the blood would be released into the open field.

Think about that for a minute.  The Law says that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin (Hebrews 9.22).  But the picture that is painted with this sacrificial act is that the blood that was shed for this sin was taken up to heaven on the wings of the other bird.  The live bird, the one bearing the blood of the other, would not be seen again--he could not be recaptured, or snared.  He was to be set free--it makes sense that he would fly away. 

That's how far God takes our sin away from us.

Leviticus chapter 16 talks about The Day of Atonement.  On this day, Aaron and the priests would make specific sacrifices for the sins of all the people.  God commanded that there be a young bull for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering.  "From the Israelite community he is to take two male goats for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering. (verse 5)"  The bull would be killed for the sins of Aaron and the priests.  Then the goats would be presented to God, and God would choose one to die for the sins of the people.  Aaron and the priests would cast lots, "one goat for the Lord and the other for the scapegoat (verse 8)".

Aaron shall bring the goat whose lot falls to the Lord and sacrifice it for a sin offering.  But the goat chosen by lot as the scapegoat shall be presented alive before the Lord to be used for making atonement by sending it to the desert as a scapegoat." (Leviticus 16.9-10)

Again, the scapegoat is to be set free, but sent away into the desert, never to be seen again.  God is painting a picture here, a representation that our sin is to be sent away, into the dry and arid land, never to be seen or heard from again.  There is no lingering guilt.  There is no holding on to the past.  Our sins are to be sent to heaven and given to God.  Our transgressions are on the head of the scapegoat, who is sent away into the desert, outside the camp and out of sight.

When Aaron has finished making atonement for the Most Holy Place, the Tent of Meeting and the altar, he shall bring forward the live goat.  He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites--all their sins--and put them on the goat's head.  He shall send the goat away into the desert in the care of a man appointed for the task.  The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a solitary place; and the man shall release it into the desert. (Leviticus 16.20-22).

The next time you are reminded of your past sins, think of the bird that was dipped in the blood of sacrifice and released to fly away; think of the goat on whose head the sins of all the people was transferred, and released into the desert to wander forever.

Isaiah 53 foretells of Jesus, God's Son. 

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering.  Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised and we esteemed him not.  Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by Him and afflicted.  But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.  We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.  (Isaiah 53.3-6)

The disciple Peter saw the similarity in Isaiah to the man whose disciple he had been:

He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.  For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.

Do not let sin overwhelm you.  You are forgiven.  Do not let sin overcome you.  If Jesus Himself became our scapegoat, what power has sin over us?  Do not let sin overshadow you.  The shame as that of an infectious skin disease has been transferred to a bird, who has flown up to God.  "Though I walk through the valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil, for God is with me." (Psalm 23)

Are we there yet?

I often refer to essays I hear on the radio.  It is the medium from which I get most of my news, and to which I am exposed most often (during my long commute to and from work--45 minutes each way, and hour and a half a day, thirty hours a week, fifteen hundred hours each year for the last 12 years).

Anyway, there has been a series of essays from different families, each recounting their holiday traditions--a little Jewish boy excited about lighting the Menorah; a woman looking forward to watching made-for-TV movies all night on Christmas Eve; and today, a Hispanic grandmother talking about making bunuelos on New Year's Eve.

For those who don't know, bunuelos are golden, crispy-sweet, tortilla-like fritters sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar, or topped with syrup.  The tradition held by this Abuela (grandmother) was that the bunuelos could not be made or eaten before midnight.  She said her children and grandchildren would start asking about them as early as 8 or 9 p.m. on New Year's Eve.  "When do we start making the bunuelos?  Can we start making them now?"  About 11 o'clock, she would start rolling out the dough, letting her grandchildren playfully argue over whose turn it was to help roll the dough balls out flat, or sprinkle cinnamon-sugar over them when they came out of the fryer.  Then the family would enjoy the sweet fritters together as the new year arrives.

"Whatever the New Year brings," she said, "we can tackle it because we've done it together, we've seen the New Year come in as a family."

One of our family's holiday traditions is to go to the Christmas Eve service held by our church.  Although there are three services, starting at 6 pm, 10 pm, midnight, we enjoy going to the midnight service.  We sing carols, light candles, and listen to encouraging words from the pastor.  Some years, offerings are taken, not for the church, but for families in the community in need.

Being a part of that service is meaningful.  Like the Mexican grandmother in the radio story, we feel like whatever life throws at us, we can handle it because we are a part of something bigger--the family, the local church, and ultimately the community of God.  I use the word "community" on purpose, rather than Church or Family or even Heavenly Host.  It conveys that we commune with God; we take communion together; we communicate with each other.


The day is coming when we will see God face to face.  We will fall prostrate at His feet and worship Him personally.  Lord, haste the day!  This is what we live for.  If you do not have a personal relationship with God, I would like to introduce you to His Son, Jesus, who is called the Christ (or the Messiah).  This Jesus was born into this world to redeem us.  It is His birth that we celebrate--He is the Reason for the Season.  This redemption involved sacrifice--Jesus laid down His very life for you and me.  But God has raised Him from the dead, so that we, too, might live.  It is a mystery, and requires faith.  By faith we commune with Him and He with us.


We celebrate the fact that whatever comes our way, we can overcome it because we have access to God through His Son, and together, we experience each day as God's family.

Clicking Cows vs. Calling on the Creator

I heard a ridiculous essay on the radio this week.  Here is the transcript:

GUY RAZ, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Guy Raz.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And I'm Melissa Block.
Zynga is the company behind popular Facebook games like Farmville and Cityville. Over 200 million people play Zynga games each month. And before the end of the year, the company is expected to have its initial public offering. Industry analysts have valued it at $15 to $20 billion.
RAZ: Not every person is a fan, though. One videogame designer recently set out to parody Zynga's games by creating an absurd version of his own.
P.J. Vogt from WNYC's On The Media has the story of an attempt at satire that didn't exactly go to plan.
P.J. VOGT, BYLINE: Last summer, Cindy Barrett got hooked on this Facebook game. The way the game works, you get a point every time you click. Cindy was battling her brother, Eric, who was routinely beating her.
CINDY BARRETT: At that point I maybe had 10 clicks a week. My brother would always have 12 clicks and it would make me frustrated. So I befriended the top clickers. They taught me how to get more clicks. Literally, within a day, I had something like 200 clicks. And I was like, hey, Eric is there any way you can compete with me? 'Cause I think at that point he had six. And it just went downhill from there.
VOGT: The game is called Cow Clicker, it's the work of a game designer named Ian Bogost. Bogost's creations are usually more like art than entertainment, people don't typically get hooked on them. Take his most recent work, a game poem called "A Slow Year." The point of the game is to experience the seasons.
IAN BOGOST: The winter game, the sun is rising. It's dawn and you've got a cup of coffee which is slowly getting cold. And you want to kind of time your enjoyment of the cup of coffee with the amount of time that it's going to take the sun to rise. It's a first-person drinking game for the Atari.
VOGT: Bogost hates popular social networking video games – games like Farmville that clog your Facebook newsfeed with notifications about how your aunt just harvested her virtual crops or your dad put out a hit on mob boss. He decided the best way to criticize those games would be to make the dumbest one he could imagine. That was Cow Clicker, the game Cindy found. The reductio ad absurdum of Facebook games.
BOGOST: You know, a game in which all you do is click on a cow and that's it. Maybe you pay for the privilege to click on a cow.
VOGT: You click your cow. It moos. Wait six hours and you can click it again. Or, you can get virtual money, either through clicks or by spending real cash that you spend to reset the timer and immediately click again.
LEIGH ALEXANDER: People took notice. The media took notice.
VOGT: Leigh Alexander is a game journalist who's also friends with Bogost. She wrote about Cow Clicker for the website Kotaku.
ALEXANDER: He was in every gaming magazine and some non-gaming magazines regarding Cow Clicker. It was much more popular than I think he had ever predicted it would be.
VOGT: Game journalists liked Cow Clicker because they got the joke. And as more players poured in, Bogost was surprised to find himself feeling pretty proud.
BOGOST: Gleeful. I mean, when people play your game, you can't help but feel pleasure. That's what you want. And I did feel that way for some time, especially when, you know, there was a relatively even distribution of different kinds of reactions.
VOGT: The resulting buzz brought in more players. But most of them weren't in on the joke.
ALEXANDER: Somewhere along the line, his larger user base began to be people who, either they understood it was a joke and they still enjoyed it or they just didn't get it or they just didn't care. Like, people really loved their cows.
VOGT: Fifty thousand people. For many of them, Cow Clicker was just another mindless, addictive Facebook game, indistinguishable from the mindless, addictive games it was meant to parody.
BOGOST: The ironist players dropped off. What I was left with were real players who were making demands, you know, who wanted things that I wasn't giving them in the game. They wanted different cows. They wanted, like, Cowthulu.
VOGT: Wait, Cowthulu?
BOGOST: Yeah they wanted a, you know, Lovecraftian Cthulu cow - Cowthulu.
VOGT: That's the bovine equivalent of a tentacled creature named Cthulu, created by H.P. Lovecraft and beloved by geeks. Still psyched that people were into his game, Bogost gave them what they wanted.
BOGOST: You know, there was a pirate cow, a ninja cow and a cow that costs over $100. When you bought that cow, we sent a real cow to the Third World. You know, I was very eager to put more material into the game to see how people would react.
VOGT: But eventually, he got uneasy.
BOGOST: After a while I realized they're doing exactly what concerned me about these games. They're, you know, becoming compulsively attached to it. There was one point when I realized that I was now attached to in a compulsive way. I was worrying about what the cow clickers thought while I was away from the game. And that was the moment at which I both felt kind of empathy with the players. And also, I began to feel very disturbed by the product.
VOGT: He decided to sabotage the game, to tweak it, to make it more maddening, more dumb.
ALEXANDER: At one point, he just like, he took the default cow, switched it to face the other direction and charged 20 bucks for it. And people bought it.
VOGT: Bogost couldn't diminish people's love for Cow Clicker. The game generated its own fan culture.
BOGOST: Cow Clicker poetry, silkscreen printed T-shirts. There was this woman who did these sort of Cow Clicker portraits of all her Cow Clicker friends.
VOGT: Bogost decided that if he couldn't ruin Cow Clicker, he'd kill it. He got in touch with friends across the world, and had them hide clues in the real world for Cow Clicker diehards to find. Once assembled, the clues spelled out a chilling prophecy.
BOGOST: Cowpocalypse, and then there was this timer that started running. And with the timer ended, then the game would shut down. Or at least that was the implication. I never really said what would happen.
VOGT: In a final twist of perversity, Bogost designed his game-ending countdown clock to speed up whenever anyone played the game and to reset if people paid money.
BOGOST: I wanted the players to feel like they were accelerating their own demise by playing. And then be tempted to maybe purchase their way out of it. And several people, like, extended the clock at the very last minute a few times.
VOGT: When you create something, you don't get to decide how it will be received. Ian Bogost's game wasn't designed to be enjoyable, but it turned out to be possibly the most resonant game he's ever made. His take on what that might mean is actually pretty optimistic.
BOGOST: It shows us how weird and complicated simple things really are. And shows me not that like I'm some sort of brilliant designer who made this thing that was bigger than I thought it was but how resilient and creative people are. I did this thing that was Cow Clicker, and in spite of it, they rose above and sort of made it something more than it really was.
VOGT: That's one way to look at it. Here's another. You remember that countdown clock?
BOGOST: When the clock finally counted down to zero, there was a cow rapture.
VOGT: Here's how the Cowpocalypse actually transpired.
BOGOST: All the cows were whisked away. And all that was left were the little shadows where they had been standing. But the game continued to run. And, in fact, the game continues to run to this day. And there are still people clicking on the spot where a cow used to be.
VOGT: Bogost still gets messages from confused Cow Clickers. A typical complaint, which Leigh Alexander, the videogame journalist, published, read that after the rapture, Cow Clicker was quote, "not a very fun game" any longer. Bogost answered: It wasn't very fun before. For Bogost, Cow Clicker was never about fun. It was a joke. But as it turned out, the joke was on him.
I'm P.J. Vogt.
BLOCK: PJ Vogt reports for WNYC's On the Media.

Now, I'm wondering if people can't find something better to do with their time than to stare at a computer screen and click on shadows of raptured cows.  I'm wondering if people can't find something better to do than to play a computer game that is a parody of other computer games.  I'm wondering if people can't find something better to think about than ways to improve a computer game, and send messages to the creator of the game with suggestions.

Perhaps in the broader context of life, we can go about our real lives in the real world.  Perhaps we can, with our God-given imagination, think of ways to improve our world.  Perhaps we can message the Creator of the world with those suggestions.  It is called Prayer.  And the Creator is called God.  And God wants to partner with us to make this world a better place.

There are two ways you can make this world a better place.  One is to read the Earth's Owner's Manual.  This is called the Bible.  You can discipline yourself to study and growth in knowledge of God and His Word.  This is called discipleship.  The other way you can make this world a better place is to tell other people about God, and invite them to accept Him as their Lord and Savior.  This is called Evangelism. 

There are many study helps available to grow in discipleship and evangelism.  One place you can find material to help you grow spiritually, or to help your church start a discipleship program is at http://walkinhisword.co

Make a difference

Small minds talk about people; average minds talk about events; great minds talk about ideas.

 A male relative on my father's side was described in this way: whatever he did, he managed to do it like he was fighting a fire.  For a Depression-era blue collar or agricultural worker, that was high praise indeed.  No matter what job you gave him, he attacked it with zeal and passion; he was solely focused on the job as if it were the most important thing in the world to him at that time.

I was reminded of that story as I scanned the radio dial last week, trying to find something worth listening to as I drove around town running my errands.  The all-sports station was airing a gossip piece about some professional ball-player's relationships with a semi-famous actress.  Small minds talk about people.  My favorite all-news station was talking about a plane crash at an air show in Nevada where the pilot and two spectators were killed.  (The death toll has now been raised to nine, as six of the wounded who were hospitalized in serious condition passed away).  Now, this was a more important story, but it was the hundredth time that day I had heard this story--it was like it was a slow news day, and this reporter just read the AP teletype as if he was reading the current weather report.  I heard no sadness for the families mourning their loved ones; I heard no suggestions of how such accidents could be avoided in the future; there was not even an analysis of the cost (in human lives) of air shows nation-wide each year.  Average minds talk about events.  

Next I tuned in to a Christian talk station, but they were doing a music segment.  Now, there is nothing wrong with listening to music, especially Christian music.  It is entertaining, and sometimes uplifting; but most of the time music on the car radio is background to conversations you have with your passenger, or secondary to the thoughts you entertain in your head: "I have to remember to pick up milk before I get home.  Home Depot has a sale on faucet covers.  Did I remember to cover my gas grill?  Oh, look, the gas gauge is on empty--I'd better go fill up."  And on and on it goes.  Mundane things, details of life that won't matter an hour from now, much less next year, or a decade from now, or after I am gone.

"Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher.  "Utterly meaningless!  Everything is meaningless."  What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun?  Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.  The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.  The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course.  All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full.  To the place the streams come from, there they return again.  All things are wearisome, more than one can say.  The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.  What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.  (Ecclesiastes 1.2-9)

We live in an age of information overload, where news of a Kardashian wedding (why is this family famous? what have they done? no, wait--I don't even want to know) gets the same attention as the war in Afghanistan.  No one ever hears of the work of the Lord, unless a missionary dies in a plane crash, or a priest gets indicted for sexual misconduct.

And it always seems like when we turn off the television and get back to building relationships with people, the first thing people talk about is what was on television last night.  People are more tuned in to pop culture than to the work of the ministry.  And when you try to encourage people in their Christian walk, they complain that their Bible study is dry--always reading about "So-and-so begat so-and-so", or "This tribe of Israel had six thousand men, and that tribe had eight thousand."

Life is hard.

We cannot be discouraged.

In order to get to the discussion of ideas, we have to disregard the gossip and direct conversations past events and toward ideas.  We have to remember that God is a creative God, and that His best idea was to have fellowship with us.  We must remember that God is a problem-solving God, and that when our biggest problem was separation from Him, He sent His Son to bridge that gap.  Sharing that message with people is the most important job we can have at any point in our lives.

We may praise those whose work ethic reminds us of fire-fighters.  But in the end, the whole world will be consumed with fire.  We have to be about saving people.  Not just people that will die without our help, but people that will die and go to hell unless we tell them about Jesus.  That is what gives our lives meaning.

Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God, and keep His commandments, for this is the whole purpose of man.  For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil. (Ecclesiastes 12.13-14)

Solomon concluded that life is meaningless without God, therefore our whole purpose is to keep His commands.  Jesus said the greatest commandment is this: to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.  How do you show your love for God? By giving Him your heart, and doing everything you do for His glory.  How do you show your love for your neighbors? By showing them God's love.   How did God show His love for us?  "But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5.8)

When we take that idea of God's sacrificial love for us-- when we dissect it and discuss it and take it to heart-- we are motivated to do something about it.  So don't spend your days chasing your tail, watching the sun come up and then go down. Don't spend your years talking about the weather or chasing the wind.  Make a difference in somebody's life today.  Tell them about Jesus.

Share, so the World will know

I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.  (Philemon 6)

The Apostle Paul certainly did carry out the Great Commission in everything that he did.  We all need to be reminded of what Jesus told us just before he ascended into heaven:

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.  And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.  (Matthew 28.18-20)

Jesus has authority over all things: all time, all people, all nations, all spirits--everything.  This is good news, because Jesus humbled Himself and became one of us; he submitted to death on the cross, as a sacrifice for our sins; and He was raised from the dead by God, who has given Him authority over sin and death.  Think about that.  If God had given this authority to Satan, the fallen angel, we would all be overcome by the demons of darkness.  If God had given this authority to the archangel Michael (whom Daniel called the Protector of Israel, and whom John in Revelation said led the heavenly armies against the dragon and his angel), then only Jews would be saved, and the rest of us would have been defeated by the hosts of heaven.  But God gave His Son Jesus authority over all things, and that is good news that needs to be shared.  Jesus told this to His disciples:

Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.  Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. (Mark 16.15-16)

 But in the Great Commission, Jesus went beyond evangelism; He commanded discipleship.  He did not say go make Christians out of all nations.  The Crusaders tried this in the Middle Ages, and they failed.  We cannot just lead people to Christ and then leave them hanging.  We must teach them how Jesus told us to live.  He said we must make disciples of all nations.  What does "disciple" mean?  Well, it has its root in the word "discipline"; and certainly, disciples of Christ must be careful to avoid sin.  But when Jesus chose twelve men to be with Him during his ministry on earth, He did not beat them with a stick.  He taught them, both in words and by example.  He spoke to them, and lived with them, and laughed with them and cried with them.  They watched Him, and listened to Him, and learned from Him.  Now that Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us, we must teach others how He lived.

Paul did this in his missionary journeys.  Acts chapter 14 talks about Paul preaching the good news in Lystra, and doing good work there.  But some Jewish leaders came down from Antioch and said evil things about Paul and Barnabas.  The Jewish leaders ran them out of town in Lystra. 

The next day he (Paul) and Barnabas left for Derbe.  They preached the good news in that city and won a large number of disciples.  Then they returned to Lystra...strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain true to the faith. (Acts 14.20-22)

Notice that Paul did not preach and then leave.  He made disciples, and when he left them for another town, he came back and encouraged them in their faith.  He did this all through his ministry.  But God knows that one man cannot reach the entire world for Christ.  That is why He commanded us to make disciples and not just converts.

Let me tell you what I mean.  If I invent a new widget, I might try to get all of my friends and acquaintances to buy the item.  I might buy advertisements to ask people to buy my widget.  And if I am successful, I might sell a few hundred.  I might hire salesmen to go and sell the widget for me.  If they are all as successful as I am, I might sell a few thousand.  But if I can teach all of my customers how to use the widget and how to sell it to their friends, and if those customers sell the widgets to their friends and teach them how to sell it to their friends, and so on, then very soon we will all have sold millions of widgets.  It's like a multi-level marketing scheme: if I can convince you to involve two or three others, and those three others convince three apiece, now there are twelve customers, and I have only spoken to three of them.  If the marketers down the line all get three, and their customers get three more, and those people each get three more, it won't take very long to get into the millions.

My dad, a retired pastor, tells the story of inviting an evangelist to his church for a revival (a series of nightly worship services designed to win souls, and encourage church members to continue in soul-winning after the evangelist leaves).  The evangelist divided the people at the service one night into two groups.  Those on the left side of the aisle, and those on the right.  He started on the left side, going down into the crowd and taking people up to the front of the church with him, one by one.  Soon he had a small group, maybe a dozen people or so.  Then he went to the right side of the aisle, and took two people by the hand and led them to the front.  He instructed those two people to go get two more, and then those four were instructed to bring two each to the front.  After each wave, there were eight, then sixteen, then 32 people up front.  His point was that he could go out and share the gospel with one person at a time, and could win to Christ a few people.  But if he shared the gospel with just two, and instructed them how to win two more, and those people were instructed how to win still more, then the number of souls saved would increase exponentially.

My aim here is to motivate you to discipleship.  Spend some quality time with someone who knows Scripture, and who can teach you who Jesus is and what He is all about.  Then go find someone that you can teach, and show them what Jesus has told you.  And after a time, let that person go so he or she can teach someone else, and then find another person you can disciple.  There are helpful books everywhere; my dad has written some, and soon there will be a website where you can buy his discipleship manual.  But don't wait.  People are dying every day without Christ.  You cannot reach them all.  But you can widen your circle of influence by teaching others how to share their faith, and how to walk in His word.

I heard a Bible Translator once, who said that Jesus will not come back until the whole world has heard of Him in their own language.  We cannot stand by and wait for a multi-lingual preacher to tell them.  We must tell the good news to our friends, some of whom may speak another language; and that person may share the gospel in his language, and one may hear who speaks a still different language.  In this way we can hasten the Second Coming of Christ.

ABCs of Salvation

We’re saved, we’re freed for evermore!
(Gretel: Your eyes are shut, pray who are you?
You’re sleeping, yet you’re singing too.)
O touch us we pray that we may all awake!
We thank you both!
The spell is broke and we are free,
We’ll sing and we’ll dance and we’ll shout for glee!
Come children all and form a ring
Join hands together while we sing!
Then sing and spring, then dance and sing
That through the wood our song of praise may sound
And echo repeat it all around!
The angels whispered in dreams to us in silent night
What this happy happy day has brought to light.
Ye angels who have watched o’er our steps
And led them right,
You we praise and thank for all our joy and wondrous Delight.
We’ll thank you all our life!
(From a children's opera by Engelbert Humperdinck based on the story of Hansel and Gretel)

In the scene above, from the re-telling of the story from Grimm's Fairy Tales, Hansel has just pushed the wicked witch into the oven and shut the door.  Scores of gingerbread cookies come to life, representing other children that the witch had kidnapped.  They all gather around Hansel and Gretel and sing the song, "We Are Saved."

In Christian circles, we talk a lot about being saved.  Salvation is an important doctrine, but I think very often we gloss over the term.  Some in the World mock Christians because they don't understand the term "saved."  Saved from what?  They don't understand the danger they are in spiritually--they believe the story of Jesus and his Redemption of all mankind belongs on the shelf with Grimm's Fairy Tales. 

The term "saved" implies that there was a danger that we have avoided.  Exactly what are we saved from?

Saved from Sin
Just like in the fairy tale above, where the children were in danger of being cooked for the witch's dinner, we are in danger of being consumed by sin.  Satan, the father of lies, lures us into complacency--a sense that we will be all right without God.  The more we see sin, the more accustomed we grow to it.  The more comfortable we are with it, the more we indulge in it.

At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures.  We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. (Titus 3.3)

Saved from Hell
Many people today think of God as loving and forgiving.  Followers of the social gospel believe that Jesus came to help the poor, and feed the hungry, and heal the sick.  They forget that He also came to save people from their sins.  God is a God of love; but He is also a God of judgment.  One day He will judge us all, separating the sheep from the goats.  Jesus came to give a hope and a future, a way to avoid sin and hell.  In His famous Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said:

If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away.  It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.  And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.  It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go to hell. (Matthew 5.29-30)

Saved by Grace
Once people realize they are in danger of hell fire, they try to clean up their act.  They try to avoid sin, and live a godly life.  But once sin blackens our soul, we cannot bleach it out; we cannot cover it up.  The stain is always there.  We would be willing to give our right arm for a second chance.  Thankfully, God has provided that for us.

But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.  He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. (Titus 3.4-5)

So once we realize that we are separated from God by sin (Romans 6.23 "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord"), and that we are all sinners, every one of us (Romans 3.23 "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God"), we come to the point where we know that we need a Savior.  Jesus is our Savior. Once we acknowledge that fact, and believe in Him, and call on His name, we will be saved.  It is as easy as ABC.

The story is told of a poor man who played the lottery religiously.  He hoped and prayed that he would win. One day he saw the good news that the ticket he held had all of the correct numbers.  He had won!  He danced for joy, because now all his prayers had been answered.  He put the lottery ticket in a safe place, and went out and quit his job.  He didn't need to earn any more money, he had won the lottery.  He bought a new car and new furniture on his credit card--he didn't have to worry about paying, because he had won the lottery.  But when the bills came due, he had no money to pay, because he had missed on crucial step--he had failed to cash in the ticket.  So his new car and new furniture were taken away.  He lost his house, because he had not kept up the payments.  He was hungry and destitute, even though he had won the lottery.

Many of us are just like that man.  We know that Jesus came to save us.  We believe His word of salvation.  But we do not receive it--we don't act on that knowledge and belief, so we miss out on the very thing we know is available to us.

This is the word of faith we are proclaiming: that if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord", and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.  For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. (Romans 10.9-10)

Acknowledge the truth.  Believe the word.  Call on His name.  Don't miss out.  Everlasting life can be yours.  Faith in Him will save you.  Grace is abundant and free.  Heaven or hell, the choice is yours.  I can't save myself.  Jesus is the only way. (You get the idea).