Vote for Life

Approximately thirty years ago, Evangelicals, no longer satisfied sitting on their hands as part of Nixon's silent majority, decided to speak up.

The Moral Majority, the Christian Coalition, and some of their companion groups arose with a vision of preserving America's religious roots and returning her to them through political engagement. I've always seen that ideal as a selective reading of history, namely, because America has always been a land of booze, getting rich quick, and the guy at the bottom of the food chain getting the shaft from the guys at the top. And let us not forget that for the bulk of our history, Africans have been held against their wills in slavery and women have had no political or legal say-so.

Are those really the roots we want to return to?

I do believe, in this country where people are the government, that Christians should be politically engaged, and in both major parties. We the people are responsible for what our political leaders do on our behalf. We're responsible if we don't vote, because we could have, and we should have. We're responsible if we do vote, particularly if the candidate we voted for wins and is seated in office. Other people in other times in other places in the world didn't have this responsibility, we do!

There's no running or hiding from it, political involvement is the cost of living in a representative democracy.

So how should we handle that responsibility? It's not so much about the whos of who's elected, but at what cost to our allegiance to God do we support and promote those whos. No politician is the answer to what ails us, Jesus alone has that power. Certainly, no singular politician, at least under our form of governance, is going to change everything. Really, most of what passes as politics is bluster and lie, and needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

The way I see it, the sooner we get these folks back to productive life after their public service the better!

There is, however, one issue that stands above all others in my viewpoint, and one for which we cannot lose heart in the struggle. When the most innocent among us are cold-bloodedly murdered day in and day out, nothing else can be right in the land. Being anti-abortion is not about returning to some fantasy about some former golden day in America, it is about life and death and we cannot shirk our responsibility. Christians must vote pro-life.

You may strategize about how to do that, whether by party affiliation or the individual candidate's stance, but make no mistake about it: you are the government and you are responsible for the choices government makes. What you can do to influence those choices is good and right for you to do, so long as it's not rebellious. By far, the easiest thing you can do is simply vote for life.

Revival Jesus

I've written before about my growing lack of enthusiasm for what is promoted as revival. The recent pseudo-revival at Lakeland only serves to reinforce those thoughts. Now, there was a time when I thought revival was just what the doctor ordered for the ailing church, I mean I came to Christ in the midst of a revivalistic wave, for goodness sake.

State College, Pennsylvania was a truly happening place in the late 70's and early 80's. People were coming to Christ hand over fist. Miracles were occurring. God's presence was readily experienced, fellowship was sweet. I was too naive at the time to realize that what was happening then was revival on a small scale. I thought that, that was just how true Christianity was practiced. It was like the Bible was happening in life.

It was only the subsequent study of church history that made me realize what had actually occurred then in State College, and I ached to see it occur again.

I still have that longing, but I'm reticent to get on the revival bandwagon these days. Frankly, the record of revivals since WWI has been spotty at best... "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." They fall like a meteor, make a splash, but given just a short time, the waters go still with scarcely a ripple left to evidence that anything happened at all. Why? 

It seems to me, revival, as this generation knows it, tends to be about feelings of relief or emotional stirrings rather than about the person and majesty of Christ.

Folk lay in convulsing heaps bemoaning with loud sorrow their sinfulness longing for absolution, or fly around erratically like untied balloons in the joy of their spiritual experience. Either way, the emphasis is on the individual rather than Jesus, and eventually, such activity is bound to run out of steam when the self is tapped. Things then settle into a depressing, entropic sameness but lessness.

A few stalwart cowboys may try to rekindle the brands and restore the sizzle of flesh on fire, but their efforts tend to be more style than substance. Then the pining begins. All those folks want is to return to the experience, like addicts trying to catch that first rush again. I have to wonder why. Didn't they meet Jesus in the midst of all that experience? Wasn't he in himself sweeter than life? Didn't they joyously embark on a walk with him from then to eternity?

You see, I can't avoid the sneaking suspicion that what some of the revival hungry are really saying is that the Jesus thing doesn't truly work except in those special times. At all others, it produces substandard spirituality, with something missing, yielding no real satisfaction. The only Jesus worth experiencing is Revival Jesus. I've got to tell you, for me, that just does not compute. It's not what being a disciple, a brother, the redeemed is all about. It's not what is presented in the Bible.

It does not, and it never will get better than a personal, interactive fellowship with Christ. That is not revival, that is Christianity. I'll happily embrace, and longingly pray for a season of visitation and harvest, outpouring and filling for the church, but we need to keep our bearings straight. To love Revival Jesus better than Jesus everyday is to flirt with idolatry. For me, everyday Jesus, just as he is, is more than enough.

"I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ " Philippians 3:8

Who Are Tongues Addressed To?

For anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God. Indeed, no one understands him; he utters mysteries with his spirit. 1 Corinthians 14:2 (NIV)

Who are tongues addressed too?

Some Pentecostal scholars have suggested that the audience of tongues is God, and therefore, the interpretation of tongues should address God as well in order to be legitimate. Under such a regimen, an interpretation that addressed people (as in prophecy) would be considered out of order out of hand. Is this intimated in scripture and should this be the standard leaders apply in accepting or rejecting intepretations? No, for two reasons.

1) Although this text says straightforwardly that a tongue speaker speaks mysteries to God, in saying so its intent is not to dictate the direction of tongues. The passage states very clearly why a tongue speaker, in effect, speaks to God-- only God can understand him. No one else does; to the people hearing it, it's merely babble. God alone understands the tongue itself, even if it was directed to men.

To extrapolate from that functional reality and say that tongues must be directed conversationally toward God is to say more than, and other than the scripture says in context. Although there are passages which anecdotally imply direction toward God, that is not the same as asserting that the direction must be toward God just because it was in those instances.

In the Law it is written: "Through men of strange tongues and through the lips of foreigners I will speak to this people, but even then they will not listen to me," says the Lord. Tongues, then, are a sign, not for believers but for unbelievers; prophecy, however, is for believers, not for unbelievers. 1 Corinthians 14:21-22 (NIV)

2) When Paul quotes Isaiah to point to an Old Testament presage of tongues, he clearly reverses the direction of communication. In other words, God speaks to men through the strange tongues that men are speaking to other men. If the model for tongues in the Old Testament has it directed from God to men, why would anyone doubt that the fulfillment of the image in New Testament Spirit-filled tongues would do the same?

Since God inspires both the tongues and the intepretation, it is up to him to determine what is done with them, including the direction of the communication. The only objective tests we are given in scripture regarding any spoken utterance deal with content, not direction. If we listened to the proponents of this directional theory, we would wind up paying undue attention to the pronouns in a message rather than its actual content. What excess or error could that possibly address?

Aren't there enough real problems for charismatics to deal with that we don't have to go around turning stones over looking for intellectual trifles to stumble over?