How to Grow Up Spiritually (Ephesians 4:1-16)
This past Sunday, I spoke to my church about how to grow up spiritually, based on Ephesians 4:1-16. To listen to the sermon, click here.
The Millennium, Part 1 (Revelation 20.1–10)
“The Substantial Evidence of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit”
The Jesus We Never Knew (Revelation 19.11–21)
The Scandal of Grace
Over at Christianity Today, Mark Galli posts some comments in response to a forthcoming book, of Unchristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity.
Part of the scandal of the Cross is the scandal of grace. And part of the scandal of grace is that I am part and parcel of the company of the graced.
My being a Christian means I am a member of a brotherhood of sinners, some of the most embarrassing sort. Even worse, to be a Christian is to acknowledge that I have been, at heart, a televangelist, a crusader, a sheltered, judgmental, proselytizing hypocrite.
I do not mean to suggest that we should be indifferent to such sins. If books and conversations like the ones I’ve experienced prod Christians to change their ways, it will be all to the good. But the church is always in need of reform, and its behavior will always be a scandal to anyone with moral sensibilities.
When we invite people to follow Jesus, we’re inviting them into the desperately sinful church that Jesus, for some odd reason, loves. To be a Christian—or whatever term you’d prefer—is to identify not just with Jesus or with the healthy church of our imagination, but also with the tragically dysfunctional church, which is mercifully embraced, if not by us, then certainly by the One who was a scandal in his own day.
Amen!
“Amnesty International’s Moral Incoherence”
Amnesty International is a respected human rights institution. It makes no explicit claim that abortion is right or wrong. But it considers law prohibiting abortion and punishing abortionists to be wrong (which is an implicit claim that abortion is a morally acceptable practice). Ryan T. Anderson parses AI’s moral incoherence further over at First Things‘ blog. He writes:
Cox’s assertion that Amnesty International has no position on whether abortion is right or wrong is ridiculous. If pre-natal homicide is wrong, then why can’t governments legislate against it? As Lincoln taught us, no one can consistently claim to have a right to do wrong. And, if abortion is wrong, it’s precisely because it’s the unjust killing of an innocent human being. If that’s the case, don’t governments have an obligation to prohibit it, and to make the prohibition meaningful by attaching sanctions against those who violate it? Does anyone doubt that Amnesty International does have a clear position on the legality of abortion? What option is left—to make laws against abortion without enforcing them?
Perhaps this is why Amnesty International explicitly opposes the United States’ ban on partial-birth abortion. Cox himself wrote that Amnesty International “opposes the specific provisions of the federal law upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Gonzales v. Carhart that criminalize doctors who perform particular types of abortions.” In other words, according to Amnesty International, when the government of the United States attempts to protect partially born Americans from death at the hands of abortionists, it is violating human rights.
This, of course, highlights the true incoherence of Amnesty International’s abortion policy. Why does the group defend the right of abortionists to kill human beings up to the point of birth but provide no protection to the unborn child? Why is Amnesty International protecting the partial-birth-abortion “doctor” while offering the partially born child absolutely nothing? Is this what it means to be a human-rights organization?
Amnesty International frequently claims to take “no position as to when life begins.” But what reason can they give for taking no position on a question settled long ago by science? Does Amnesty International deny that the entity being “aborted” in partial-birth abortion is a human being? Are those feet the abortionist is holding when he jams a pair of scissors into the base of child’s skull anything other than human feet? Is the blood that streams out something other than human blood? That a child in the womb is a living human being is a matter of scientific fact. Does Amnesty International deny it?
So, if Amnesty International chooses to address the abortion issue at all, on what grounds does it deny human rights—and the most fundamental of all human rights, the right to life—to unborn human beings? Such a position undermines the entire foundation of human rights. For basic rights are founded on the conviction that all human beings—regardless of sex, race, ethnicity, intelligence, age, size, location, or dependency—are the subjects of profound, inherent, and equal dignity simply by virtue of their humanity. If this dignity does not depend on particular characteristics that vary from one human being to another and across each lifetime, then every human being must possess such dignity—and, thus, the rights it entails—from the point at which he or she comes into being. Does Amnesty International deny this?
If Amnesty International believes its support of abortion follows from the logic of human rights, then it should have no problem answering such questions.
The Marriage Supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19.6–10)
Exercise and Mental Health
From Christianity Today‘s blog comes this post by Stan Guthrie:
While an apple a day may (or may not) keep the doctor away, a growing body of research indicates that exercise may keep the psychologist away. Alessandra Pilu of the University of Cagliari in Italy and other investigators reported their conclusions in the online journal of Clinical Practice and Epidemiology in Mental Health.
"The study found that depressed women who started a supervised exercise regimen had significant improvements in their symptoms over the next 8 months. Those who didn’t exercise showed only marginal improvements.
"Before the study, all of the women had tried taking antidepressant medication for at least two months but had failed to improve.
"A number of studies have found that physically active people are less likely than couch potatoes to suffer depression. Some clinical trials have shown regular exercise can help treat the disorder, and perhaps be as effective as antidepressant drugs in some cases.
"The new findings suggest that exercise can even help people whose symptoms have been resistant to medication, according to the study authors."
Since an estimated two-thirds of American adults are overweight or obese, high rates of mental illness shouldn’t surprise us. Mental illness is not just mental. We are integrated, living souls, and approaches must be holistic, treating mind, body, and spirit.