September 2004

Ever wondered how couples choose a mother for their child? Well wonder no longer. Again the NYT's "Sunday Styles" section obliges us with the answer in the form of a prominently placed ad with the following copy:

DONOR EGG

IMMEDIATE AVAILABILITY

The internationally renowned donor egg program at Genetics & IVF Institute, based in suburban Washington, DC, has long met the high expectations of sophisticated patients and medical specialists from around the world. We offer approximately 100 fully prescreened donors immediately available for matching and utilization by our patients. These donors include many Doctoral Donors in advanced degree programs (sic), and numerous other egg donors with special accomplishments, talents, or ethnicity...

Life begins at the Genetics & IVF Institute!

-ad from September 26, 2004 New York Times (emphases in the original)

Presented a choice between an egg donated by a Brown University PhD candidate and a Nashville belle working in a church day care center, which would it be? And between a graduate of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and the daughter of a baptist minister in western Nebraska who, since graduating from high school, has clerked at Walmart? And between a cheerful coal miner's daughter who lives in eastern Kentucky's Letcher County, and an oceanographer from La Jolla who works at Scripps?

Well, with all due respect for these honored representatives of the "Doctoral Donor" class, as far as I'm concerned it ain't even close. Let's hear it for church day care, Walmart, and Letcher County coal mines.

Assuming that, when the normal American goes through church doors, he doesn't go through a paradigm shift about the nature of leadership, it's interesting to note what the secular authorities advise concerning the speeches of Bush and Kerry:

(Kerry) uses what George P. Lakoff, a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkley, calls "hedges," words and grammatical constructions that imply uncertainty or qualification.

"There are certain forms of grammar that don't commit you, phrases like 'I believe' or 'I think,'" Mr. Lakoff said. "Kerry has to learn not to do that."

"It is possible to be decisive and not sound decisive," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. "People who speak in sentences that contain parenthetical phrases, people who begin a sentence and then deflect to add a series of illustrative examples before they end the sentences" do not seem authoritative, she said. "The language of decisiveness is subject, verb, object, end sentence." (Alex Williams, "George 'The Squinter' Bush vs. John 'The Grinner' Kerry--A Showdown of Style!" New York Times; Sunday, September 26, 2004.)

And what of pastors? Do we use "hedges?" Do we preach in a way that "implies uncertainty?" Are we careful to "qualify" our proclamations?

If so, our preaching "does not seem authoritative" to the souls we have been called to shepherd. Nuanced, yes; but not authoritative.

How sobering is that? What a contrast to the preaching of the prophets, apostles, and our Lord Himself:

Now the word of the LORD came to me saying, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, And before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations." (Jeremiah 1:4, 5)

As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed! For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ. For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. (Galatians 1:9-12).

For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:18,19)

Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell--and great was its fall."

When Jesus had finished these words, the crowds were amazed at His teaching; for He was teaching them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.(Matthew 7:24-29)

(Note from Tim Bayly: Again, this piece is by Dr. Andrew Dionne, Assistant Pastor at my brother, David's, congregation, Christ the Word (PCA) in Toledo, Ohio.)

It's common for stockbrokers and political moderates to hope for a split between the party that controls the office of the President and the party that holds a majority in at least one of the houses of Congress. Either gridlock ensues, which limits the government's micromanagement and makes fiscal conservatives happy, or the parties work together to form middle-of-the-road compromise solutions, which make moderates glow with satisfaction. Jonathan Rauch, in his article "Divided We Stand" published in Atlantic Monthly (October 2004), explains the hoped-for results:

Divided control...draws policy toward the center; and by giving both parties a stake in governing, it can lower the political temperature so that even daring changes (tax reform, welfare reform) seem moderate. In other words, divided control makes the country more governable.

What is desired in politics, though, stands in stark contrast to the single-minded unity that is to characterize those who lead the Body of Christ. Paul writes to the factious Corinthians, "Now I exhort you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree, and there be no divisions among you, but you be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment" (1 Cor. 1:10). In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul writes, "Finally, brethren, rejoice, be made complete, be comforted, be like-minded, live in peace..." (2 Cor. 13:11). The Philippians receive Paul's exhortation to be unified: "Only conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ; so that whether I come and see you or remain absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel..." (Phil. 1:27).

Having witnessed the work of several elder boards I have come to realize that the blessed boards are those whose decisions are largely unanimous--though passionate arguments are had along the way. This unity is not enforced

Some meditations on a morning picketing in front of Bloomington's abortuary where, this day, about ten mothers entered a building intent on paying a medical doctor around $300 to kill their unborn child:

Two thirds of those picketing are Roman Catholics, and this has been consistent since I first picketed twelve years ago. Although I'm grateful for the zeal the Roman Catholic church shows and passes on to her congregants on life issues, it's scandalous that Protestants (and particularly reformed Protestants) are relatively careless about these things. Would our Lord be careless? Would He steer away from the scenes of death in our fair cities? Would He have nothing to say to a young woman on the arm of her boyfriend walking into that hell-hole? Would He be careless about her soul, tossing off a flippant, "Let the pagans kill their babies if they're so inclined?"

The men there think that women are better fitted for the public work opposing abortion, and it is a constant theme of those who resent our presence that as men we ought not to be there, but let women be the public face of the pro-life movement. I disagree.

Men are called to defend life, whether that defense is carried out in the contest for public opinion and the shaming of those who oppress the little ones, or on the battlefields of the Mideast. How soft are Christian men today who are pleased to send their mothers and daughters and wives into the fray of battle, assuaging their consciences by saying "It's better that a woman speak on this issue." Exactly when was it that God ceased calling men to defend the lives of the weak and oppressed, the old and young, the born and unborn?

A seventy-year-old man gave me the finger as he drove by, lifting his arm between his head and the window so his wife wouldn't see it. What was that about?

How sickening to see an old man facing the winter of his life and hating another man holding up a sign saying "Abortion kills children." Putting the best/worst construction on it, maybe he once had a daughter caught in a crisis pregnancy and he encouraged her to have an abortion? But I'd be willing to put money on it that this man's conscience is killing him. May he come to Jesus for the forgiveness of sin, as I have and do.

Speaking of the conscience, I'll never forget Joe Sobran's observation some ten or fifteen years ago that "The guilt over abortion is the fuel that drives feminism." Yes, I have never questioned the truth of his statement, and often meditate on it when I see the anger and hatred of our nation for those who speak up for the unborn.

Being a Christian involves saying both God's 'yes' and His 'no.'

Christians today want to avoid saying God's 'no,' and this is a large part of the reason that our community can get out hundreds of souls to come to the crisis pregnancy center's banquet and the walk for life, but can hardly put together ten souls one morning a week to stand and witness against the killing going on in Planned Parenthood's building on South Walnut Street.

Both must be done; neither neglected. God's "Yes," certainly. But also His "No!"

I must admit to my own guilt in this matter. I have not been faithful as I ought in opposing abortion and supporting the crisis pregnancy center. May God forgive me and help me to serve the needy as I ought.

Finally, last night we had a delightful little curly-haired two-year-old at our dinner table who was saved from Bloomington's abortuary. His mother was walking into the killing place and one of our elders' wives called out to her saying we would do anything necessary to help her carry her little one to term. Shortly afterward, the young woman walked back out of the abortuary and took our elder's wife's phone number. Two months later, she called this woman and told her that she was willing to receive our help, and to place her child up for adoption in a good home.

A couple in our church adopted this little boy and now his cherubic face graces our services, nursery, parking lot, and dinner tables. Pray for him, his father and mother, will you? That God will use them as witnesses to the grace and love of Jesus Christ to all who repent and believe.

A brother in Christ comments on an earlier post: "Today in America, the opportunities for a doctrinally orthodox pastor to maintain a bland inoffensiveness don't seem all that great."

To the contrary.

As a lawyer-friend of mine once put it concerning the preaching of his church in another state, "With the indicative, can't we please have the imperative?"

Or as a Bible Study Fellowship leader from one of my former churches put it, "It's not up to the preacher to apply the text--that's the job of the Holy Spirit. He is the One who should convict of sin, not you."

There is a relentless opposition to pastors preaching in such a way as to apply the text to the lives of their congregants, to preach to the conscience and not just the mind, and to call for repentance. In fact, there is a relentless opposition to pastors who move past teaching, to preaching.

This opposition is documented across church history and in the Scriptures. Consider Jesus' summary statement concerning Jerusalem:

Therefore, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city, so that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. Behold, your house is being left to you desolate! For I say to you, from now on you will not see Me until you say, "BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD!" (Matthew 23:34-39)

Speaking of the absence of danger in the preaching of his day, Kierkegaard was pointing out what is true here today--that pastors have given up preaching, settling for truisms, velveteen rabbit stories, and nostrums. We have given up working for the salvation of the souls we were called to guard and have settled for working for the building of our kingdoms or the maintenance of our lifestyles. And when security becomes the greatest good, danger must be removed. But not in too obvious a way.

If it's too obvious, the pastor might be exposed as the charlatan he is, holding the sinecure he does, and then the gig would be up. So we must act as if we're shepherds, good shepherds, and preachers and prophets, but do it in such a way as to avoid danger scrupulously. Give the congregants drama, all the drama they want, but fill the gun's barrel with blanks.

No, the market for "doctrinally orthodox pastors (who) maintain a bland inoffensiveness" continues to be a bull market.