Category Archives: Culture at Midnight

Celebrate Life in a Culture of Death

Choose for yourselves whom you will serve…As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Joshua 24:15.

Joshua laid it out plainly. You have to make a choice. Serve the gods of the land, or reject those gods and serve the God of Israel. Choose in or choose out. If you choose in, you’re rejecting the ways of the nations and embracing the unique character of the people of YAHWEH.

Recently, the abortion issue has found its way back into the news. Alabama and Missouri are leading the charge back to the Supreme Court. The target? Roe v. Wade. Turn the ship around. Reverse the course set in 1973 when the slaughter of millions of us began. Whole generations exterminated at the stroke of a pen. The pro-life movement intends to stop it.

That is the world’s answer: change the law. That was the answer in ’73 when the champions of abortion rights planted the flag on SCOTUS’ front lawn. It would appear that is still the answer as the pro-life forces sound the warison in Alabama, Missouri, and elsewhere. These are the first battles in a much longer war to change the law.

The question is, in 45 years since Roe v. Wade, what is the condition of the heart of this nation? Has Western culture grown more inclined to value life? The answer seems obvious. Given the choice between rights and restraint, individual rights are the clear winner. How troubling that this culture regards the freedom to end life as a cherished right  while regarding the creation of life as, at best, a happy result of a loving union, but not infrequently, a regrettable hazard of sex.

As for we and our house…we shall reverence, honor and celebrate life.

We followers of Jesus, cultural outsiders, must devote ourselves to living consistently with the faith of our earliest fathers who selflessly cared for discarded children.

An early observation of the community of the Christ followers reads:

…there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through . . . Like others, they marry and have children, but they do not [abandon them to die]

Let’s begin here:

  • Life is holy.
  • Life is a gift from God.
  • The creation of life is a responsibility and an honor to be entered into in the context of a covenant.
  • The termination of life is a fearful responsibility that belongs to God alone.
  • We must respect the freedom God has given all men and women to choose, even if we are confident those choices are wrong in the eyes of God.

This means that our community ought to be a refuge for the helpless. We should be committed to protect children and provide shelter for those who need it. We should be ready to provide assistance to men and women who are unprepared to nurture the life that has been entrusted by circumstance to their care. Among us, we should be determined that the creation of life belongs in the context of an abiding union that reflects the relationship between God and His creation.

The priorities of the church should include adoption, prenatal care, childcare, training for parents, foster care, family counseling — in short, anything that nourishes and celebrates life. Imagine a community in which the announcement of a pregnancy is a call for celebration; the anticipation of birth a joyous season, and the bringing forth of new life a call to community. Not just an announcement in the bulletin, but an intentional party.

As the world looks on, may the community of the saints reflect the joy and holiness of life. May we be a stark contrast to the culture that values as a right the destruction of it.

Do the Opposite

There is a private wrestling match going on in me. It has to do with how to navigate the force-fields that are operating in the world right now. More than that, I struggle with the sense that we as followers of Jesus must get prepared to live apart from the surrounding culture, not taking our cues from media, politics or any other of the cultural bellwethers, but from the Spirit and from the example of our predecessors in the faith.

Yesterday I had a discussion with a young friend who was curious about my political opinions. I told him I had very few. That was being honest. I have little confidence in political motivations and the ability of government to bring about a just and peaceful world. Moreover, I doubt that we are getting real transparency through the media and from persons in places of power who have good reason to tell the viewing public what the focus groups say we want to hear. Continue reading Do the Opposite

Let’s Build a Rat Park

As the culture clock ticks toward midnight, we read the following headline: Deaths from booze, drugs, suicide could spike 60 percent to 1.6 million over next decade.  Tragically, that dire warning didn’t  surprise me. I bet you could say the same.

We’ve watched the downward skid for quite awhile. Watched. Fretted. Made peace with impotence.

As this blog series has suggested, there’s not much we can do outside the community of Jesus. People gonna do what people gonna do.

What we can do, though, is build a rat park. I could argue that Jesus has commanded us to build a rat park (John 13:34-35).  Continue reading Let’s Build a Rat Park

Caution: Microcosms of Malice

And so it happens again, this time in a church. People are gathered to worship. Children playing with friends. Adults enjoying conversation. There is music and prayer. A community has come together in the name of the Lord, Jesus.

A man, boiling with hatred enters the sanctuary and begins firing a weapon which has as its sole purpose the taking of human life. It performs flawlessly. Twenty-six brothers and sisters of the Kingdom are dead with another twenty injured. The illusion of safety in this world, if such an illusion persisted, is shattered in a tiny town in Texas.

Another mass shooting. Days before, a worshiper of a demon god (certainly no righteous deity could have inspired such an act) murders eight innocents with a rented truck in New York. Before that, 58 killed in Las Vegas. Elsewhere in the world, acts of cowardly inhumanity are standard fare. Hatred has gone viral. Continue reading Caution: Microcosms of Malice

On a Garden that Needs Tending

 

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace…


 

I’ve been thinking about the Peace Prayer of Saint Francis. It occurs to me that it is a fitting inspiration as I learn how to coexist in a culture nearing midnight.

All around us we hear of violence and antagonism; of dispute and discouragement. Time and again I feel like “throwing my hat into the ring” on some of it.  I want to make my opinion known. Fight for the right, you know? I recently did just that and then regretted it. I’ll talk about that next time.

Seriously, what good will it do to stake out my position in a society that is coming unraveled? Particularly when my own garden here in “God’s Kingdom coming” needs tending. While the world outside blusters and blows, shouldn’t we be the calm in the storm?

St. Francis does a good job of outlining our job here between heaven and earth:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:

where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

where there is sadness, joy. 

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek

to be consoled as to console,

to be understood as to understand,

to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive, 

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, 

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Amen.

New Blog Update

A while back I wondered on this blog about starting another blog at stonebutterfly.net, a domain name that I hold. I was concerned about some of the things I see going on in the culture and was thinking about addressing the “in-house” response that we Jesus followers should make as we live in a culture nearing midnight.

I’v e decided not to start up another site. I already curate this one at  ‘tween2worlds as well as twoworldsmedia.com, summithome.org, danmayhew.net, and I need to be launching the site that’s sitting idle at abideministries.us.

Enough, already!

Rather, I’ve decided to try to consolidate my of my online activities so I’m not splattered all over the web. That means that my thoughts about the church in a culture at midnight will appear here at ‘tween2worlds.  They’ll have their own category, “Culture at Midnight.” There are a few already so labeled.

Stay tuned for more.

Shalom, y’all!