The Eternal Optimist

Minister Paul Williams once described the Disneyfication of American culture as Disney taking the bite out of children’s literature. He suggested that when Disney finished with a classic story, little of the original remains.By his definition, it might mean J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan is no longer a sweet boy and “It is only the gay and innocent and heartless who can fly.” Or as Thomas De Zengotita suggested in Mediated: How The Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It, the key word becomes heartless.

Williams suggested a trip to the playground quickly reveals this lack of heart, children being by nature self-centered and heartless.  We reacted in horror when we saw this play out a few days ago as we watched an adolescent Tulalip Indian lad, who as far as anyone knew, was an angry, confused, mixed up adolescent, and who seemingly lacked adequate moral foundations. The boy invited his friends to join him at his school lunch table so he could take them with him as he killed himself.

One invited guest declined for personal reasons. That pastoral family of one of our ministers still rejoices beause their daughter is still alive. What do we do with a culture that chooses to be gay, innocent, and heartless, while continuing to beckon future generations to join them in their self-absorbed lifestyles?

Numerous studies support findings in which Fortune 500 CEOs make multi-millions annually. And if you are fortunate enough to lead a major oil company, you can multiply that figure several times. One Exxon Executive found himself earning a whopping $144,573 per day. But while the rich get richer, the American church sits on the political sidelines, often as gay and innocent and heartless as children.

Since when is it morally ethical and right for an executive to earn 100-250 times the salary of an average employee, irrespective of the company’s health, while they slash the health and pension benefits of their work force? Is that treating others like we all want to be treated? Or is it that they “deserve” that by right of  their title, status, position, or whatever else they measure life by?

It reminds me of what Stephen Carter said: “If everything we do is protected by ‘my rights’ there is no longer any reason for dialogue or community.” I know; business is business! Nothing personal; it is all about the bottom line! Well, Carter said something else worth noting: “Those who love democracy should love its rules.” He also recognized that “our ability to discipline ourselves to do what is right rather than what we desire is what distinguishes us from animals.”

Nevertheless, this attitude is so culturally ingrained that a neighboring Michigan School Board refused a salary increase to its district teachers for four consecutive years while giving measurable increases to everyone in management. Simultaneously, the Board increased the teachers work load in teaching hours and reduced the benefits on such items as health insurance.

The church too often sanitizes this kind of  injustice by turning blinded eyes to the practiced heartlessness, like a Disney movie that rejoices because “We are so blessed by God.” We believe our American lifestyles is our birthright. Admittedly, the church helps feed the hungry, but it does little if anything about the grossly unequal distribution of wealth in the world that continues to widen to Grand Canyon proportions while economically violating the vulnerable.

If anyone challenges this issue of distribution and calls for more equal distribution, we use very selective words that designate them as political enemies--Communists, socialists, traitors to the American Dream.

All the while, poverty claims 2.7 billion global residents that live on less than $2 per day. Among these are 9.2 million of our neighbor’s children (25,000 each day) under the age of 5 that die annually, mostly from “preventable” diseases. Another 2.5 billion people have no access to safe sanitation, and some 900 million lack access to clean water, resulting in nearly 11,500 additional people dying unnecessarily every day from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.

Because I still believe “in the beginning God…” I am forced to ask myself is God just wasting his time with us; or is He really our Creator, Redeemer, and Eternal Optimist. If he is Who we bekieve him to be, what does that require from us?

From Warner’s World at walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

Redemption is a Reality

From my early adolescence, the name of Louie Zamperini (January 26, 1917 – July 2, 2014) lurked as a memory of an American distance runner. He became a World War II POW survivor and in 2010 Laura Hillenbrand wrote a best-seller about his experiences. It has been adapted into the 2014 movie “Unbroken".

An Italian immigrant family moved to California, where Louie became the target for bullies. Older brother Pete involved Louie in track. Louie quickly gained recognition and started running seriously, He quit drinking and smoking. Following Pete’s advice, he ran, ran, ran. He became a self-obsessed fanatic, going undefeated through high school, gaining a scholarship to USC, and trying out for the Olympics.

The 5000 metres seemed his best opportunity. Running on one of the hottest days ever in New York, he survived the collapse of co-favorite Norm Bright and several others, and fnished with a superb spint. A dead-heat tie with American record-holder Don Lash qualified the 19-yar-old as the youngest American ever in that event. 

He finished eighth in the 5000-meter distance event, but his final lap of 56 seconds caught the attention of Adolph Hitler, who insisted on a personal meeting. As Louie told it, Hitler shook his hand, and said simply "Ah, you're the boy with the fast finish". Bill 'Stern's Sports Newsreel recorded Zamperini climbing a flag pole during the 1936 Olympic games and stealing the personal flag of Hitler.

Zamperini set the 1938 collegiate mile record of 4:08 minutes despite severe shin cuts from competitors attempting to spike him during the race, His record held for fifteen years and earned him the nickname "Torrance Tornado". He enlisted in the United States Army United States Army Air Force in 1941, earned his wings as a second lieutenant and deployed to the Pacific islands as a bombardier on the B-24 Liberator bomber Super Man.

When Super Man became no longer flight-worthy, and with several crewmen injured, the remaining crew were reassigned to Hawai. There, they were assigned to search for a lost aircraft and crew. They were given another B-24, The Green Hornet, recognized among the pilots as a defective "lemon plane". On May 27, 1943, mechanical failures caused the plane to crash, killing eight of the eleven men aboard.

Zamperini and crew-mates, Russell Allen "Phil" Phillips and Francis "Mac" McNamara survived with little food and no water, Subsisting on captured rainwater and small fish eaten raw, they caught and ate two albatrosses, using pieces as bait to catch fish, and fended off shark attacks while nearly capsizing in a storm. They survived multiple strafings and McNamara died after 33 days at sea.

Adrift 47 days, Zamperini and Phillips reached the Marshall Islands and were captured. Held at Kwajalein Atoll for 45 days, they were transferred to the Japanese POW unit at Ofuna, for unregistered prisoners. Zamperini spent his remaining time at Tokyo's Ōmori POW camp and Naoetsu camp in northern Japan. Throughout captivity, they were severely beaten and horribly mistreated until the end of the war in August 1945.

In 1946, Louie married Cynthia Applewhite. Drinking heavily while trying to forget his POW abuse,  escape his haunting nightmares and dreams of strangling his captors, his life and marriage unravelled, Cynthia became a born-again Christian at a1949 GrahamCrusade in Los Angeles. Louie reluctantly accompanied her in hopes of preventing their pending divorce, with continual prodding by Cynthis and her newfound Christian friends.

 Zamperini described becoming a born again Christian after Graham reminded him of his continual prayers on the life raft and in the prisoner of war camps where he repeatedly promised to seek and serve God. Accepting Christ led to forgiving his captors and escaping his nightmares. Later Graham helped him launch a new career as a Christian inspirational speaker.

A favorite theme became "forgiveness". He visited captured guards from his POW days and shared his forgiveness, particularly with some of those who had committed the worst atrocities held at Sugano Prison. In Tokyo, in October 1950, Zamperini went to Japan, gave his testimony, and preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ through an interpreter (missionary Fred Jarvis). The colonel in charge of the prison encouraged prisoners who recognized Zamperini to come forward and meet him again. Zamperini threw his arms around each of them and again explained the Christian Gospel of forgiveness to them. The prisoners were surprised by Zamperini's genuine affection for those who had once ill-treated him, and Zamperini told CBN some gave their lives to Christ.

Zamperini last appeared on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno June 7, 2012, speaking about his life in general, the 1936 Olympics, and his World War II exploits. Until his death, he lived in Hollywood and served at First Presbyterian Church. His death was mistakenly announced previously when he was classified as killed in action, following his B-24 Liberator crash with no survivors reoirted. FDR even sent Louie’s parents a formal condolence note in 1944.

His actual death came 70 years later, via pneumonia on July 2, 2014 in Los Angeles, at home, aged 97.

I am not a fan of war, horror, and violence, but Laura Hillenbrand tells this graphic story with extraordinary skill, great empathy and sensitivity. The paperback version is 406 pages, but Hillenbrand tells a graphic story. Spending seven years in massive research, with an army of assistants, she has given us a low-key testimonial of a profound religious conversion every bit as powerful as the story told by Chuck Colson.

This may not be an easy read for some, but the takeaway of Louie’s survival and resilience—and redemption--will be worth it all. From Warner’s World 

… walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com  

5/31/2014 -- 4 Mile Long eruption of Liquid Sand + stored CO2 @ Fracking...

Words ...

For too long I have been in too much of a hurry to look up words I could not define when reading. After using words for a lifetime, I am beginning to enjoy picking up a dictionary and being sure I understand the true meanings of words. 

As we enter into Thanksgiving Week, we follow that with Advent and the celebration of Christmas. Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, we now commonly refer to as BLACK FRIDAY. What is “Black Friday”?

Black Friday begins the Christmas buying frenzy fomented by the marketers and frequented by multitudes of secular participants. Stores depend on this season for a disproportionately huge chunk of their annual sales. On this day customers vie with each other to be first in line, camp out on the streets, and do whatever else is necessary to insure getting into the store and grab the bargain they want, obtain the cheapest price they can get, or acquire whatever else may be their objective.

When my wife and I moved to Portland, OR a few decades back, we discovered “Friday Surprise” at Meier & Franks Department Store. She dragged me kicking and screaming to our first and my last last “Friday Surprise.” The doors opened to a huge stampede of humanity crushing its way through the doors and into the shopping areas. “Customers” screamed and yelled. People fought. Customers literally yanked garments out of the hands of other customers!

This was a shopper’s mayhem that continued weekly as we acquainted ourselves with life in that otherwise rather civil society over the next few years. Later, I worked nearby at Olds & King Department Store, but I never became part of another Meier & Frank “Friday Surprise.”

Black Friday, like Friday Surprise, is another marketing strategy utilized by an industry intent on capturing an entire population. Madison Avenue currently controls the television industry with an iron fist that makes the average citizen an enslaved audience that is increasingly controlled and dominated by the subtle impulses of greed, acquisition, affluence and self-serving rights.

You are prompted to spend, spend, and over-spend. Obtain what you want, what you deserve! Nothing down, enjoy now, pay next year! Or five years from now. As far as the television is concerned, good journalism, wholesome programming, and World News have long ago ben dumped into the Hell of poor ratings, denigrated to the inconsequential.

As you enter this festive holiday season, consider the definition of the word “sacrilege” … “1. The act of appropriating to oneself or to secular use, or of violating, what is consecrated to God, or religion 2. The intentional desecration or disrespectful treatment of a person, place, thing, or idea held sacred. SYN.—sacrilege implies a violation of something sacred, as by appropriating to oneself or to a secular  use something that has been dedicated to a religious purpose; profanation suggests a lack of reverence or a positive contempt for things regarded as sacred; desecration implies a removal of the sacredness of some object or place, a by defiling or polluting it.”

Interesting enough, my Second College Edition WEBSTER’S NEW WORLD DICTIONARY says what most preachers I know, pastors and priests, dare not say today for fear of offending church parishioners, or Santa Claus, or the Easter Bunny, or even the Chamber of Commerce!

FWIW, it seems we live in a profoundly profane and sacrilegious culture that profanes the sacred by replacing it with Santa Causes and Easter Bunnies and desecrates the faith for the sake of The Almighty Dollar that is now its Deity.

Walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

From Where God Sits

Herb Shaffer, pastor-church planter alias Life Coach was but a name until recently. I encountered him at the Crowne Plaza in Lansing, MI while conversing with friend Bill Jones as the 94^th session of the General Assembly of the Church of God in Michigan got underway. Now retired from pastoring 18 years and working at a slower pace writing, editing, and promoting books, I can no longer undertake the expense of attending the full Assembly but I attend the BIG day (2-day affair) as often as possible.

Concluding my conversation with Bill, I strolled over and this tall, lean-looking stranger shooked my hand. I recognized him from pictures in “Michigan Action”. This peer-stranger became a friend--especially when he picked up a book, wrote in it, and handed it to me – From Where God Sits. I found this to be his quest to see life from where God sits. 

Having met numerous other Shaffers’ in many places across the country through the years, I learned Herb is a product of Maiden Lane Church of God in Springfield, OH. Now, to a Wolverine that suggests just another Buckeye, but everything I learn about Herb spells o-k-a-y . . . As a Life Coach, he administers the ISL Program formed in the minds of Area Administrators of IN, IL, MI, OH, & PA.  Initially envisioned by Don Smith in 1987, then Assistant State Minister of Indiana, the dream was to educate Ministers and Lay leaders in practical applications of church growth principles and teach a methodology for churches to embrace and practice. 

This Five Church System became the first framework around which the ISL Curriculum was designed. Currently, it teaches the Natural Church Development system designed to bring churches to health with the understanding that healthy churches grow naturally—a sensible conclusion. Meetings are planned for two day seminars (Friday-Saturday) each spring-fall for 12 hours of instruction, workshops and small group interaction.

Since books are dear to any Minister’s heart, you can understand my enthusiasm. On reading From Where God Sits, I found Herb’s highly-intriguing insightful analogies and descriptive phrase-turns, one liners, unique thoughts spun into short stories, an utterly wholesome view of life. He wrote them conversationally in easy-to-grasp concepts that frequently pushed the envelope for good devotional reading - forty-eight chapters in 146 pages!

His dry humor first hit my radar antennae. At other times I laughed out loud. A one-liner that captured me announced “behind every don’t is a bigger do.” Try applying that to the Ten Commandments and the Law of Moses! He didn’t write all of this in what I consider the most refined grammar and sentence structure, but what he did do was capture my attention! He challenged me--to examine myself more closely than I am accustomed to doing in the much reading that I do.

If you trip when he doesn’t write in the theological language or brand of conservatism--liberalism your theology prefers; rest easy, he will deliver a sound conclusion befitting those lessons taught by Jesus and modeled by Peter, John, Paul and the multitudes within Christian orthodoxy.

I am a better person for having taken this walk with Herb, and let me be quick to add “Thanks Herb, for Chapter Forty ‘Over the Hill or Top of the Ridge’” (Ch. 40, p. 117). I wrote my first piece on “Life Begins at Forty” nearly fifty years ago, but your myth debunking made me cackle. And frankly, it made my adrenaline pick up its pace ... 

You can always reach Herb at herbshaffer@hotmail.com, shown at right n a teaching session. From Warner’s World, 

this is walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

Look to Jesus and Live

A young man stepped out of the cold, stormy night and entered the primitive chapel in Colchester, England. The preacher’s message was warm and inviting: “Look and live.”

Inside, a Methodist lay-preacher named John Egglen faced no more than a dozen or fifteen people. He repeated his text carefully, before hesitantly inviting his hearers to “Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.”

He spoke only briefly, in a rather homely fashion. Then, with the freedom of that era; John Egglen looked straight into the eyes of his youthful visitor, riveted his attention, and declared: “Young man, you look very miserable, miserable in life and miserable in death, if you don’t obey my text; but if you obey now, this moment you will be saved. Young man, look to Jesus Christ, look. You have nothing to do but to look and live.”

Tourists visit that historic chapel today and read on the stone tablet marking the site: “Near this spot C. H. Spurgeon looked and lived.”

Looking to Jesus transformed that teenaged London lad into the fountainhead from which Londoners freely drank living waters for several decades. It transformed the young Spurgeon into a man with a heart for God and launched him onto history’s stage of action, where he initiated one of the most fruitful Christian ministries ever launched. It refocused Spurgeon’s life and created a wellspring to which people came from around the world to drink and find refreshment.

Hymn-writer W. A. Ogden described the experience of looking to Jesus and finding unsparing love that restores life in the superlative:

               I will tell you how I came, Hallelujah!

               To Jesus when He made me whole:

               ‘Twas believing on His name, Hallelujah

               I trusted, and He saved my soul.

               -----

               ‘Look and live,’ … my brother, live,

               Look to Jesus now and live;

               ‘Tis recorded in His Word, Hallelujah!

               It is only that you ‘look and live.”¹

                                                                                ^{The American SERVICE HYMNAL,} 

^{Nashville/ John T. Benson Company, 1968} 

^{(W. A. Ogden, “Look and Live”, p.239)}

While we busy ourselves renovating our political structures and tweaking our therapeutic gospel; could it be that we would find life easier to live with if once more we would just look to Jesus … now …  and live?

^{From Warner’s World, walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com}

Religion and Violence

Catholic theologian Karen Armstrong caught my attention with her publication of Fields of Blood that discusses religion and the history of violence (NY, Knopf, 2014). Elsewhere, I have written about America’s violent history, a violence that long defended slavery, practiced ethnic genocide, and otherwise left an ugly picture. I concur with Armstrong’s defense of religion(s)  that recognizes it as a substantive force of reconciliation and non –violence more than the practice of hostility and competitive force that some suggest.

She references historian John Bossey who reminds us that “before 1700 there was no concept of ‘religion’ as separate from society or politics (cf: Wm. Cavanaugh/The Myth of Religious Violence/159/John Bossy, “Christianity in the West, 1400-1700/Oxford/1985/170-71). As we shall see later in this chapter, she writes, “that distinction would not be made until the formal separation of church and state by modern philosophers and statesmen, and even then the liberal state was slow to arrive. Before that time, ‘there simply was no coherent way yet to divide religious causes from social causes; the divide is a modern invention. ‘People were fighting for different visions of society, but they had as yet no way to separate religious from temporal factors.”

“This was also true of the English Civil War (1642-48),” she concludes, “which resulted in the execution of Charles I as the creation in England of a short-lived Puritan republic under Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658).”

Armstrong counters the notion that religions are intrinsically violent (as per Crusades etc), and that violence comes primarily from secular sources such as the nation-state, and especially when that political power behaves in the manner of the Roman Caesar and views itself as the supreme value. Caesar emphasized this by demanding his subjects worship him as their Deity.

She well documents events like Abu Graib, 911, and other aspects of the current conflict between ISIS and Western Culture. She illustrates how the perpetrators of 911 felt great compassion for Islamic peoples and causes, sufficient to become radicalized, but were also very “lite” in their Islamic faith. They were hardly conversant enough with the Koran to know its teachings forbid the harassment et al of other religions, and especially Judaism and Christianity. Their violence resulted more from their secular/political ideologies than their teachings from the Koran.

Another idea that captured my attention is found in the following quote (Armstrong/274-75). She writes: “James Kelly and Barton Stone railed against the aristocratic clergy who tried to force the erudite faith of Harvard on the people. Enlightenment philosophers had insisted that people must have the courage to throw off their dependence on authority, use their their natural reason to discover the truth, and think for themselves.

“Now the Revivalist insisted that Americans could read the Bible without direction from upper-class scholars. When Stone founded his own denomination, he called it a ‘declaration of independence’: the revivalists were bringing the modern ideals of democracy, equality, freedom of speech, and independence to the folk in an idiom that uneducated people could make their own. This Second Awakening may have seemed retrograde to the elite, but it was actually a Protestant version of the Enlightenment. Demanding a degree of equality that the American ruling class was not yet ready to give them, the revivalists represented a populist discontent that it could not safely ignore.

“At first,” she continues, “this rough democratic Christianity was confined to the poorer Americans, but during the 1840’s Charles Finney (1792-1875) brought it to the middle classes, creating an ‘evangelical’ Christianity based on a literal reading of the gospels … Like the Second Great Awakening, these modernizing movements [social issues] helped ordinary Americans to embrace the ideal of inalienable human rights in a Protestant package ... the Great Awakenings in America show that people can reach these ideals by another, specifically religious route.”

I found Armstrong supporting the notion that we can be true to our faith while also lifting up the downtrodden and the vulnerable. To recognize the social aspects of our faith ministry is not necessarily to delute (liberalize) our faith, as some contend.

Like a good writer, she stretched my mind and expanded my understanding. She cleared my thinking about religion being widely united against violence and added to my understanding of religion as a social uplift as well as a spiritual renewal. From Warner’s World, I am walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

Doubt Conquering Faith

Tromp, tromp, tromp marched an endless army of rain drops. Peeking through the curtains, Charles Naylor saw only heavily burdened clouds filling the leaded sky with cold rain. Depression flooded through the window washing away his flickering hopes.

Hadn’t God called him from the classroom and into the pulpit! The eager young enlistee in God’s Army left his schoolroom behind and was following God’s call into evangelism. Like a pebble tossed into placid waters, his call had taken him in ever-widening circles around the nation. But now, stuck here with his injured grandfather, no calls came.

Glancing about the room, he felt the pleasure of helping in this family emergency, but two months … without any calls … “how could God be pleased?” Grandfather’s injury had been serious enough to require care, and Charles loved his grandfather dearly. Yet, the pain of separation from his preaching ministry flooded his mind with incriminating thoughts that threatened him with thoughts of failed obedience.

As Charles meditated on the pit-a-pats of rain stoically marching past his window, he thought “Well; if I can do nothing, I am the Lord’s anyway.” The cloud of gloom seemed to rise slightly and a warming ray of fresh gratitude peeked into his mind. He took up his pencil and paper and the words of gratitude began pouring forth to God for the comforting thought.

Troubled emotions gave way to trustful security and before long Charles felt a deep inner sense of God’s Fatherhood. Personal conviction gripped his innermost being as he realized that Paul’s words in Romans 8:35-39 expressed his deep, personal convictions. Guided by Paul’s words, Charles translated those inner convictions into verses that expressed poetically the worshipful commitment he felt.

When a fellow minister set his verses to music, it resulted in a hymn that I have sung since childhood.” It is a hymn of faith that defines faith at work in troubled times when overwhelming difficulties cause us to reevaluate our faith. Not only does it remind me of who I am; it reaffirms me for Whose I am - “I Am the Lord’s:

               Whether I live or die,

                              Whether I wake or sleep,

               Whether upon the land

                              Or on the stormy deep;

               When ‘tis serene and calm

                              Or when the wild winds blow,

               I shall not be afraid--

                              I am the Lord’s I know.

               When with abundant store

                              Or in deep poverty,

               And when the world may smile

                              Or it may frown on me;

               When it shall help me on

                              Or shall obstruct my way,

               Still shall my heart rejoice--

                              I am the Lord’s today.

               During the more than four decades that Charles occupied his own bed of affliction, scores of people sent letters to Charles declaring how his affirmation of faith had blessed them in their darkest and most difficult hours. Recalling the depression of those dreary days he spent caring for his beloved grandfather, Charles no longer doubted that faith conquers doubt.

               Knowing that his hymn shaped the contours of many people’s walk of faith, C. W. Naylor concluded           

               There’s no defeat in life

                              Save from within;

               Unless you’re beaten there

                              You’re bound to win.²

_____

               1 Worship the Lord, Hymnal. (Anderson, IN: Warner Press, Inc. 1989) p. 639. 

               2 C. W. Naylor, Secret of the Singing Heart. (Anderson, IN: Warner Press, 1974) p. 11.

_____              

From Warner's World, I am walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

"Such Were Some of You"

I met Gene when I joined a small Christian self-help group. We were part of a seminary community where we were each finding new meanings to life in those oft-sung words of that old hymn that reminds us there is “strength for today and hope for tomorrow …”

Dismissed from his church after his third arrested, Gene had lost both his job and his family. Until joining this small circle of close-knit Christians, the former church musician existed as a man without a country,  Only in his eleventh hour did Gene find healing through a group of people that loved him.

              

In spite of Gene's homosexual behavior, our group accepted Gene for who and what he was. We loved him as a human being created in the image of God and we extended to him unlimited grace that supported him as he was until he could become who he wanted to be--in Christ. 

Gene tediously scratched and clawed his way out of his pit of self-disparagement and social abandonment. By the grace of God, and with the encouragement of his widening circle of supporters, Gene’s life turned from its repetition of defeat after defeat and launched into a  full recovery.

              

Conversion became personal, powerful and productive. God’s transforming power became obvious in all that Gene did. His group-family taught him how to face himself openly and honestly, as well as how to interact with them. The group became the conduit for God’s grace, channeling living waters of health and healing into Gene‘s life.

With the help of his new friends, Gene found new reasons for hope. Christian discipleship and reading of the Scriptures, brought him Biblical reassurance when he read, “And such were some of you” (I Corinthians 6:22, RSV, italics added).

Supported by this circle of friends, Gene took the necessary time to work his way painfully through responsible restitution. As a result, Gene discovered new peace that replaced his former turmoil. New possibilities for transformed living invigorated Gene as he found renewed satisfaction in productive behavior and wholesome relationships.

Gene found himself a new man--a man after God’s own heart, like the Psalmist David. Through faith, he overcame his earlier failures. And like others whose stories the Bible tells, Gene found that in his new-found companionship with the Lord Jesus Christ, he had tapped into an undiscovered power line that the disciple John described as power “to become children of God” (John 1:12 RSV).

From Warner’s World, I am

Walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

Loving People and Outliving Hatred

Jesus believed in life. He believed in the power of Divine Love. To the twelve men who became the original disciples of Jesus, he said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you. By this all men will know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35 NASV, italic added for emphasis).

Elsewhere, Jesus taught that life could be fully lived by compressing it into two all-encompassing rules:

     1) love God supremely; and

     2) love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:38-40).

In exercising this love, Jesus concluded, “Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me” (Matthew 25:40). And the reverse of that is 25:45: “to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.”

While reading today, it occurred to me that for me to love all men inclusively, and that seems to be what Jesus calls for, is to accept pacifism and war against no man. What else is pacifism, but intentionally refusing to fight with our neighbor? In our humanity, we want to pick and choose the issues we support and the people we love. We love selectively! We love the life of the unborn fetus but we have no such scruple against a terrorist, whom we demonize as our enemy, and with whom we go to war.

Did not Jesus say, “For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax-gatherers do the same? Instead of that, Jesus said, go the second mile, instead of just loving your neighbor, love your enemy and pray for those who abuse you (cf Matthew 5:38-47).

While Christians struggle with such a teaching as Jesus gave us, it seems that it took someone like Ghandi to look at the issue squarely. It was Ghandi who declared, “Mine is not an exclusive love. I cannot love Moslems or Hindus and hate Englishmen. For if I love merely Hindus and Moslems because their ways are on the whole pleasing to me, I shall soon begin to hate them when their ways displease me, which they may well do any moment. A love that is based on the goodness of those whom you love is a mercenary affair” Armstrong/(Field of Blood/Knopf, NY 2014/305, emphasis added).

“The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them,” suggested George Bernard Shaw, “but to be indifferent to them; that’s the essence of inhumanity.” That indifference is the one thing that the love of Jesus will not allow us to do. We dare not remain indifferent; thus, Eleanor Roosevelt was quite right when she said, “Life was meant to be lived … One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.”

I’m not suggesting Mrs. Roosevelt was thinking of Jesus when she made her comment about life, but I cannot think of anyone else for whom those words take on more real meaning than Jesus. If anyone understood what it means to live life to the full, I believe it was Jesus. And realizing the wisdom of those words, he refused to turn his back on life when he had numerous reasons for doing so. Gospel wisdom suggests that Jesus went to the cross because he had not outlived his love for a humanity that he wanted to live to the fullest.

I believe it is important to live life to its fullest, and who other than Jesus could William Croswell Doane have been referring to when he concluded, “He had lived out his life but not outlived his love.” Jesus lived out his life in loving service, then surrendered his life on that Roman cross because he had not yet outlived his love.

From Warner’s World,

I am walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com,

asking that the Christ empower us to love all people, everywhere, and be indifferent to no person, anywhere

Tomorrow is Church Day

It is Saturday afternoon and I just watched a football game in which my grandson’s team blew-out their opposition: University of Northwestern 49—McMurray/Jacksonville, IL 13.

I didn’t go to the game but I watched it streamed on my computer and that is just one of the blessings I enjoy today by being progressive and making considerable effort when I really hated being dragged by my kids into the computer age. I typed my college and seminary papers and for nearly forty years I typed out my Sermon outlines on my trusty Underwood upright typewriter, after learning to type while in the Air Force.

In 1990 my kids gave me no choice, teaming up with my wife, and they insisted I buy a Word Processor while we were visiting in Minneapolis. That began a costly road, but once started there was no going back. Many times I found this new life confusing and terribly frustrating, but the rewards have been far greater, and I would be most foolish of all men today were I to try to go back to my trusty Underwood Typewriter.

Such is much of life. A story from the life of Colerdge tells of a friend who looked at the poet’s weed-filled garden, and said to him, “Why don’t you dig up those weeds and plant flowers?” The beloved poet allegedly replied, “I don’t want to prejudice the garden in favor of flowers. We just let it grow up as it is.”

That may sound strange to you, but I well remember the young mother who brought her children to our church years ago. She came from a more liberally oriented denomination and she was soon to depart from us and meet her husband in Japan, where he was stationed with the Air Force. She eagerly shared how she planned to take her children and visit the scenic places and historical sites while there and one of her major objectives would include exposing her children to all the great religions of the world.

When I quizzed her further, she informed me that she planned to then let them choose for themselves which religion they would follow. Like Coleridge, she planned to let the flowers and the weeds in her garden grow up together, without influencing them via cultivation.

That’s an interesting perspective and sounds so idealistic, but it is highly risky as some parents find out in today’s world when their children become terrorists et al. Unfortunately, if ou do not guide your children churchward, Christward, Godward, and heavenward, YOU WILL BE THE ONLY ONE WHO IS NOT INFLUENCING THEM. The world will have its influence. The unbeliever will have his influence. The criminal element will have its influence; as will the drug pusher, the pimp, the procurer, the bookie, the chisler.

They will all have their degree of influence upon your child however much, or how little, you influence your child! Unfortunately, the streets of our cities offer no diplomas and confer no degrees, but they educate with exacting precision. The nation’s only hope today lies in the Godly nurture and admonition of the children under the loving and endearing hands of their parents.

And if you think they are not hearing, you had best pay closer attention. When my daughter was but 2-3 years old we lived in a place where we listened to a radio station on the Mexican border. Every week we tuned in and listened to W. Dale Oldham on “The Christian Brotherhood Hour.” That same summer we drove north to attend our North American Convention. One day, we stood a short distance from a group of visiting preachers, whom we recognized on sight. While they conversed among themselves, our little daughter suddenly bolted across the grounds toward those visiting preachers, loudly exclaiming, “That’s my Dr. Oldham”!

Dr. Dale turned toward us to see what was happening and saw her running full tilt toward him. He opened his arms and scooped her up as she catapulted herself into his arms. She had heard a familiar voice coming from a stranger she had never seen, but it was a welcome voice she knew from home 1700 miles away and she knew it was right and friendly and safe. Needless to say, he stood there and wept

Tomorrow is church day and that brings me to a verse I encountered somewhere in my past:

You asked me why I go to church;

I give my mind a careful search.

Because I need to breathe the air

Where there is an atmosphere of prayer.

I need the hymns that churches sing;

They set my faith and hope on wing.

They keep old truths and memory green,

Reveal the work of things unseen.

Because my boy is watching me

To know whatever he can see

That tells him what his father thinks.

And with his eager soul he drinks

The things I do in daily walks,

The things I say in daily talks.

If I with him the church will share,

My son will make his friendships there.

Every child has a right to a dad and mother who love each other and who share their very best with their children. This is Warner’s World and I am 

walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

Strengthening Our Foundations

Reopening the Leaning Tower of Pisa in 2001 followed an expensive $25 million renovation and kept it closed

for a dozen years. During that time workers removed 110 tons of dirt from beneath the tower, stabilized the foundation, and corrected sixteen inches of tilt. The sandy soil lacked the stability needed to sustain a monument of the weight of the Pisa tower, leaving it tilted heavily to one side.

           

Walking side-by-side with Christ minimizes the effects of eroding foundations like the shifting sands beneath Pisa’s tilted Tower. When Jesus returned with Peter, James, and John, from the Mount of Transfiguration; they found a large crowd in a noisy confrontation. The disciples who stayed behind had been unable to heal a boy with an unclean spirit. A troubled dad had sought their help, but their spiritual formation was such that they could do nothing but await the return of Jesus.

Upon returning, Jesus healed the boy. When finally alone with the disciples, the disciples asked Jesus why they could not heal the lad. “This kind can come out only by prayer,” Jesus concluded (Mark 9:29).             

Prayer adds spiritual dimensions into one’s spiritual formation, enabling one to walk with Jesus and serve in simple trust. Upon returning to Capernaum, Jesus asked what they discussed so diligently while they were walking. When they did not admit their competitive spirits, Jesus went to the source of their striving by gathering them around him and describing the true greatness of leadership.

You want greatness? Serve others! Wait at the end of the line! Assist the least among you (33-37)! Strong spiritual formation results when prayer rises upward out of deep trust in God, Christ becomes our bulls-eye--the target at which we aim (38-50).  We become our message (39). We compliment others, rather than compete with them, because we serve in his name. We anticipate a full and fair reward for each, and the cups of cold water we give in his name make our message more important than the messenger.

This living the life—orthopraxy, brings its own rewards; whereas breaking fellowship--offending the child--offends God. Disciplined living reduces the torments of clinging hindrances, improves behavior, and increases our delight in God’s presence. Following are a daily dozen for disciples wanting to correct the tilt caused by shifting sands.

Confess Jesus as Lord (Romans 10:9-10; Philippians 2:11).

Depend daily on the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18; Acts 11:8).

Pray without ceasing (I Thessalonians 5:17; Luke 18:1).

Search the Scriptures daily (John 5:39; Acts 17:11).

Attend public worship regularly (Hebrews 10:25; Psalm 50:5).

Invest liberally without grudging (2 Corinthians 9:7; Luke 6:38).

Prioritize Jesus’ mission (John 4:35; Matthew 38:19-20).

Deny self and live for others (Matthew 20:26-28; I John 3:15).

Witness to someone daily (Acts 2:42).

Grow in grace (I Peter 3:18; Ephesians 4:12-16).

Memorize a Bible verse (Psalm 119:11; Daniel 12:3).

Carry your Bible as a travelling companion (Titus 1:2; Philippians 2:16).

          

Taste the full flavor of being at peace with one another, united in purpose, and powerful in sharing His-story. And remember: second best always costs more than it saves.

walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

Keeping Neighborly Relations

I had a thought-provoking discussion with a young medical technician recently as she prepped me for a biopsy. While I quizzed her about her medical career, she responded by informing me that she had no medical insurance. She had to pay cash if she had a medical problem arise.

This young woman works for a prominent medical doctor in our community, a fine Christian man of a different denomination than me but a highly respected gentleman nonetheless. I’ve been pondering that and remembering when my spouse worked for a “Christian” business man who paid no insurance, paid minimum wages although he was quite generous in his personal gifts to some of his management people, and as an entrepreneur he always “operated” on the other guy’s money, paying his bills as late as possible and with other such tactics that supported his entrepreneurial business philosophy.

I am not an economist! However, this all seems to pre-suppose that as an employer if I cannot provide employee medical insurance I am justified in paying only what I can afford, even if I could not live on it. This brings us to the numerous news stories regarding institutions like McDonalds and Walmart and the issue of low level employees striking for a supposedly living wage. Going one step further brings up the issue of CEOs justifiably receiving obscene piles of money while paying only low-level salaries to down-the-ladder employees.

As I listen to economists and other public commentators sound forth today, there is in our culture the recognition that "business is business" and it is all about crunching numbers and the profit line. People issues are only “crunched numbers.”

Having gone this far, I now see my young medical tech as part of a large labor pool at the bottom of the social ladder being manipulated according to the myopic needs of capitalists who may vary from corporate executives to entrepreneurs who have borrowed a “shoe-string amount” to launch into business and travel the highway toward the American Dream.

I must say, by this time in my life I have become very uncomfortable with this philosophy that operates entirely out of one’s personal perspective, without regard for the other person, not to mention the common good. How do I as a Christian integrate the teachings of Jesus into my behavior so that my beliefs and my behavior become one and the same?

Some people answer this by privatizing faith; separating my private life from my public life, especially if I am a politician. This justifies schizophrenic behavior that separates the public me from the private me and produces an unhealthy split personality. This person simply says “business is business … politics is dirty business.” This person lives as a two-sided coin: one side is religiously nice and the other side is dirty – unclean – or whatever is needed, and the two never meet! Their behavioral life becomes entirely relative and controlled by their context—they have no solid creed to live by.

I do not pretend to have the answer! I offer no panacea to cure it all. What I know at this point is that I have chosen to integrate the teachings of Jesus Christ into my beliefs and behavior, because I believe life in Christ is the right way for people to live. So, here I am asking myself how can a self-professed Christian doctor (or whoever) hire and pay a wage for which s/he would not work. We are expecting our employee to work for an income we would find unacceptable, and we do this knowing s/he cannot afford to do better (or does s/he?)

The bottom line says (to me) if I don’t have the money to pay this person the usual expected amenities of society; that makes it okay for me to treat them as I would not wish to be treated and pay them a substandard salary so that I can get started. They will take the job because they need that income, limited though it may be, for they are hungry and they need it. The zinger in it is that Jesus said “in as much as you do it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me.”

This bit of wisdom from Jesus reinforces the story he told about the Good Samaritan (Luke 10). There, Jesus told an enquirer that the way to eternal life was briefly summarized by 1) loving God supremely and 2) loving your neighbor as yourself! Simply stated, if I need a living wage for my family, so does my neighbor; if I need medical insurance (as commonly practiced in our economy), so does my neighbor!

My conclusion: To follow Jesus, and be a Christian employer, I must figure my business operating expenses in such a way that I treat my employee(s) as I would want to be treated. That may not follow the rules of an MBA degree in business management, but it certainly comes closer to living by the principles Jesus set forth for his disciples to follow.

I must live in ethical relationship with my neighbor; otherwise circumstances  do not justify my being in business.Here is a different way of expressing the point:

Christ has no hands but our hands to do his work today,

He has no feet but our feet to lead men in his way:

He has no tongue but our tongues to tell them how he died,

He has no help but our help to bring them to his side.

We are the only Bible the careless world will read,

We are the sinner’s gospel, we are the scoffer’s creed;

We are the Lord’s last message given in deed and word,

What if the type is crooked? What if the print is blurred?

What if our hands are busy with other things than his?

What if our feet are walking where sin’s allurement is?

What if our tongues are speaking of things his life would spurn?

How can we hope to help him  and welcome his return? (Anonymous)

From Warner’s World,

I am walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

The House That Hope Built

Noted Black Historian John Hope Franklin owned a Green House where he doted over his magnificent collection of Orchids. Filled with a variety of plants, his plant sanctuary hosted something in bloom during every season. Franklin called this his “house of hope.”

Life in Christ offers us a “house of hope” where eternal spring blossoms perpetually in the human heart. Refreshed and recharged through worship, Scripture reading, and extending friendship without expectation of something in return, He sends us forth to live as windows through which God’s Son-shine warms and comforts.

Across the decades, multitudes have found their faith refreshed and renewed through His “Blessed hope”:              

               Blessed hope we have within us is an anchor to the soul,

                              It is both steadfast and sure;

               It is founded on the promises of the Father’s written word,

                              And ‘twill ever-more endure.¹

              

As songwriter William Schell wrote, Harold Arendt exercised this audacious hope through singing songs of faith that affirmed God‘s love for him. Young Harold grew up in a Church of God parsonage where he watched the people under his father’s pioneer ministry. He saw God filling the lives of Church of God people and filling other people’s lives with hope that enabled them to bless still others in turn. They were a living embodiment of the words written by the Psalmist: “As for the saints who are in the land, they are the glorious ones in whom is all my delight (16:3, NIV).

Translating personal hope into working faith empowered Harold to pursue his dream of becoming an educator. To achieve his goal, Harold drove truck, worked in a bakery, clerked in a grocery store, and did piece work in a nearby factory. His hope-filled faith proved ever dependable and he obtained his education. Receiving that coveted Doctor of Education degree allowed Harold to invest the rest of his Christian life in public education.

He spent his best years investing himself in his pupils; until finally one day he received an anonymous telephone call. The mysterious caller announced, “I’m the boy who started the fire.”

Harold remembered that star football player from a few years earlier. “I’m now a teacher in the public schools,” he announced, “and I thought you would like to know that you are the one who inspired me to be a teacher.”

Harold recalled the fire that ignited in a box of shavings in the school’s brand new industrial arts facility. He remembered quietly but quickly stepping to the sink in the rear of the room, filling a bucket with water, and dousing the flames before returning to his desk - without fanfare.

School authorities only learned of it only when the troubled youth finally confessed, “I had never seen you excited and I wanted to see what you would do when you were excited.” 

Harold’s quiet demeanor and consistent faith somehow fired the aspirations of that young student. He felt inspired to become a teacher, just like the man he so much admired. Through Harold’s years of teaching, the hope he had first seen in the lives of other parishioners eventually became a capital investment in Harold’s personal life. In turn, Harold reinvested that capital and it paid off handsomely in the lives of young students like that young football player.

A quiet demeanor accompanied by consistent behavior very often offers the best of hope to others looking for personal affirmation. Such hope empowers people to stretch themselves. Hope conditions people to reach outward and upward. Such hope elevated Saul of Tarsus to a new level of human achievement as the Apostle Paul. 

Paul's house of hope prompted him to acknowledge that his relationship with Jesus hope kept him steadfast and sure, and caused him to further conclude, “we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who are called according to His purpose.” ²  

^____________

1 William G. Schell, “We Have a Hope.” (Anderson: Warner Press, Inc., 1989), p. 727.

              

2 Romans 8:28, NASB.

From Warner's World,this is walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

_____

Characteristically Barney. . .

Ten days before his death, Pastor Ernest Fremont Tittle informed his Evanston, IL United Methodist congregation that while Christianity brings pain it is first and foremost a religion of joy.

Dr. Tittle recalled the persecution experienced by Christians in that first century. They were poor. They were cruelly harassed. Yet, they were notably happy. By the time of the third century, Tittle concluded, a Christian could say “The church is the one thing in the world that always rejoices.”

This is something people of the Church of God Movement of Anderson, IN have always understood. Sixteen year old Barney discovered this unspeakable joy when he experienced a religious conversion in the 1880’s revivalism in southwest MI, led by Joseph Fisher, Daniel Warner and others.

As a result, he obtained his father’s permission and left home to travel in a musical ensemble with evangelist Dan Warner. Barney began by singing bass in that gospel group and that led him nation-wide into a life of musical evangelism. As a result, he served a long and fruitful life as a preacher-pastor, song evangelist, and prolific song composer. He eventually penned more than two thousand songs, spending his final years in Springfield, OH (His camp meeting cabin can be inspected in Anderson, IN where our friend Dale Stults relocted it).

Characteristic of Barney’s music was the unspeakable joy and the glory of the Christians who joined him in walking with Christ. When sung by faithful Church of God believers, Barney’s music produced a symphony of choral joy.

I never met Barney, although we grew up probably no more than five miles apart in our southwestern Michigan community. We were a few years apart, but he preceded me by perhaps for decades, although our lives overlapped each other. As a boy however, every time I attended church, his name topped numerous pages in the green hymnal from which I sang. I knew him only as the “Chief Singer,”¹ but his lyrics fortified me as my life extended into the adult decades of life and ministry.

One of Barney’s hymns still much beloved is “Joy Unspeakable.” In it Barney assures me that the Grace of God’s is more than mere soft soap; it is vastly superior to the cleansing powers of that liquid I squirt into my dishwater as I wash my dishes. His inspired words remind me that

I have found His grace is all complete,

He supplieth ev’ry need;

While I sit and learn at Jesus’ feet,

I am free, yes free indeed.

It is joy unspeakable and full of glory,

Full of glory, fully of glory;

It is joy unspeakable and full of glory,

O the half has never yet been told.²

 Barney Warren’s songs of joy reinforce those teachings from the Bible teach me that at the very center of God’s great universe there is a deep, abiding, and everlasting joy.

Clement of Alexandria, one of the early church fathers of ancient history may have come as close to the truth as anyone ever did when he suggested that a beautiful hymn to God is an immortal man who is being built up in righteousness, and upon whom the oracles of truth have been engraved.

_______________

            1 This title gave voice to a book by Axchie A. Bolitho, To the Chief Singer, A Brief Story of the Work and Influence of Barney E. Warren. (Anderson, IN: Gospel Trumpet Company, 1942).

            2 B. E. Warren, “There Is Joy in the Lord,” Worship the Lord. (Anderson: Warner Press, Inc., 1989), p.616.

From Warner's World, this is walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com