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An interview with the CBN host and founder.
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Pat Robertson, host of “The 700 Club” talk show and founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), believes he may be hearing a new call from God: a possible run for the office of President of the United States. With that in mind, Robertson has switched his affiliation from the Democratic to the Republican party; reorganized aspects of his Virginia Beach, Virginia, enterprise; and met with Christian leaders and political organizers nationwide. In an interview with CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Robertson explained why he is considering a political campaign and outlined where he stands on key issues.
In the past, God has directed you to do various things, such as startCBN.Has he given you specific guidance regarding a presidential bid?
I have received a leading similar to what I had when I came to Virginia Beach to start CBN. But running for President is so monumental that I want to check it out with religious leaders and others whose opinions I respect. I’m holding meetings around the country to ask people their opinion, in a sense to confirm what seemingly has been shown to me over the last several years.
One of those meetings was held in Washington, D.C. Who was there?
The participants included Southern Baptist Convention president Charles Stanley; Jimmy Draper, a past-president of the Southern Baptist Convention; Ed Young, pastor of Second Baptist Church in Houston; Campus Crusade for Christ president Bill Bright; D. James Kennedy, senior pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; E. V. Hill, pastor of Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles; Jerry Falwell, president of Moral Majority; and Tim LaHaye, head of the American Coalition for Traditional Values. We also had a couple of representatives from Hispanic churches.
Did they encourage you to run?
The emotion was mixed. The only negative feeling expressed was that going from the job I now hold into any secular, political job would be a demotion.
The consensus was that evangelicals urgently need a voice to represent their point of view. They felt it was a “win-win” situation. If something happened to bring about a presidential campaign, it would be good for evangelicals and for the nation. If it did not result in receiving a nomination or winning the general election, then it would still bring unity in the body of Christ and give Christians a focus of discussion in the councils of leadership in our nation.
Would you anticipate broad support from evangelicals if you were to run for President?
I’m amazed at the unanimity. I am being encouraged from every sector, from very conservative fundamentalists to centrist evangelicals to charismatic Pentecostals. I’m being encouraged both in white and in black church groups. It seems there is a hunger in the hearts of millions of religious people for a voice to represent conservative, traditional, moral family values in our country. However, that doesn’t imply a decision on my part.
Some say you might wind up playing a “Jesse Jackson” role—one who raises issues and gains a power-broker position. How do you respond to that?
I don’t want to be a power broker. I have a wonderful job now, and I’m able to influence millions of people for good and to help millions of people through our outreach ministries. I wouldn’t jeopardize that just to be a power broker. I’m a team player. I have strong, conservative points of view, but I try to bring harmony to those who disagree with me.
You have a significant ministry at CBN. Would a presidential candidacy impair the work of that ministry?
We have capable executives, and “The 700 Club” has a cohost and cohostess who are extremely capable, CBN could go on with or without me. According to Gallup, 69 percent of Americans have heard of “The 700 Club,” and only 33 percent have heard of me. The thrust has been the ministry as opposed to Pat Robertson. If I were off the scene, I don’t think it would be the blow that some people think.
Would you have to be replaced as host of “The 700 Club”?
Not until I was a declared candidate, and that could be held off at least two years. I would not have to remove myself from management of the organization. But once a person is a declared candidate, he either has to go off the air or give equal time to every other candidate every time he appears.
In 1984, there was a thorough investigation of the finances of Geraldine Ferraro and her husband. Would you personally, and CBN corporately, be willing to disclose your finances?
We already disclose them. Our 990T Internal Revenue Service tax return is on file in every public library. An independent auditor issues quarterly statements and yearly or semiannual audits on our operations. We’re also under the scrutiny of the Federal Communications Commission.
As far as my personal finances are concerned, I would not mind releasing my income tax statements.
Your board structure and corporate financial statements don’t qualify CBN for membership in the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. Do you anticipate any changes?
Our board has been essentially a prayer board. We haven’t had a lot of outside businessmen. We’ve had CBN executives and people who were intimately associated with the ministry. The Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability requires a majority of the board members to be outside directors. In the event that I get into politics, we would probably expand our board by at least two members.
You have said you would not impose your beliefs on others since we live in a pluralistic society. And yet you advocate specific moral values. How do you reconcile these two positions?
The fear is that an evangelical Christian would use the power of government to force people to accept certain religious values. I have no intention of doing that. I’m a great believer in personal freedom and the nonintervention of government in people’s private lives.
However, all law represents somebody’s value structure. The moral values of our schools will either be based on Judeo-Christian values, humanism, or communism. It will either be the values that made this country great, or the values of those who supplanted them over the last several decades.
You often speak about a supernatural insight from God called a “word of knowledge.” How much do you rely on such insights in your own decision making, and how would that influence public policy making if you were to hold office?
In 1 Corinthians 12, the apostle Paul said the word of knowledge is for the church. The apostle Peter said that as each has received a gift, let him use it to benefit others (1 Peter 4:10).
When someone is hurting, the Lord sometimes shows another person what the problem is. I have had this experience when I’m trying to help people with psychological or physical problems. It helps me know what’s going on in their lives so I can help them. But God doesn’t give me words of knowledge in my own life.
Let’s discuss some issues. If you had the opportunity to appoint justices to the U.S. Supreme Court, what criteria would you use?
I studied constitutional law at Yale Law School. I respect the tradition that brought our Constitution into being and the interpretation of it through the early decades of our government. I would look for judges who have a similar respect for the historical basis of this document.
The Constitution is a living document because we can amend it through political processes that take a long time. Five unelected officials (a majority of the Supreme Court justices) should not have the power to amend the Constitution.
Would you push for a constitutional amendment to allow spoken prayer in public schools?
Yes. But I would prefer to see the mortality tables do their work in relation to 80-year-old Supreme Court justices. If two new justices were appointed, we wouldn’t need constitutional amendments regarding abortion or school prayer.
As President, how would you encourage Israel to deal with Arab Palestinians in its occupied territory?
Israel has to live within secure borders. The United States can’t force Israel to give up what Prime Minister Begin called Judea and Samaria. The only intelligent solution would be a confederation of an Arab entity on the West Bank within Israeli perimeters. That entity would not be an independent Palestinian state. It would be allied with Israel.
Should the United States pursue nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union?
We should go ahead with technical superiority. Some believe the Soviets are so paranoid that if they feel the United States is gaining superiority it could trigger nuclear war. Some kind of parity might accomplish our end without trying to go for major superiority.
If the United States continues such things as the strategic defense initiative, we can overcome any mass advantage the Soviets may have—even in missile warhead capabilities. The strategic defense initiative is forcing the Soviets to scrap $200 billion or $300 billion of spending and go into a whole new level of technology. Their economy is not prepared for that. We should continue to force them into an unequal race where we stress our technological advantage and reestablish some kind of equilibrium.
We must get out from under mutually assured destruction, where we hold our civilians captive to their assaults and they hold theirs captive to our assaults. A defensive shield in space against nuclear aggression that could be shared by both parties is appealing. However, the best solution would be to eliminate all nuclear arms on both sides.
WORLD SCENE
CHINA
A Printing Press for Bibles
A printing plant is scheduled to be built this year in Nanjing, China, to produce at least 250,000 Bibles and 500,000 New Testaments annually. The press also will print hymnbooks, Christian literature, and other educational literature.
The printing plant is a joint project of Nanjing Normal University and the Amity Foundation, a social service organization initiated by Chinese Christians. With financial assistance from the United Bible Societies, the foundation will supply new printing and binding machinery. Nanjing Normal University will extend its existing printing facility to provide room for the new equipment. Construction work, shipment of equipment, and hiring of staff will continue through this year.
In a separate development, 100,000 Bibles and more than 60,000 New Testaments have been printed in China on paper supplied by the United Bible Societies. One hundred tons of paper was donated to the Amity Foundation last year. The foundation’s general secretary said nearly all the Bibles have been sold.
The United Bible Societies is a fellowship of 102 national Bible societies with work in more than 180 countries and territories.
ISRAEL
A Letter-writing Campaign
A Baptist congregation in Jerusalem is organizing an international letter-writing campaign to try to persuade the Israeli government to allow it to rebuild its church with expanded facilities. The Narkis Street Baptist Church was destroyed by fire in 1982.
Last fall, the Jerusalem district planning commission rejected the church’s plans for a new facility encompassing a 400-seat auditorium, several Sunday school rooms, and office space. The commission invited the congregation to submit a new plan to build facilities about half as large as those proposed earlier.
Robert Lindsey, the Southern Baptist representative who pastors the church, said it is “almost certain” that pressure from extremist Orthodox Jewish groups prompted six of the nine commission members to reject the rebuilding plan. “A kind of subtle permission is being granted to those who would violently attack Christian institutions by the refusal of authorities to speedily grant permits to rebuild and enlarge,” he said.
The 300-member congregation is organizing a letter-writing campaign to urge Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres to intervene. The church is also preparing a legal appeal to the High Court, Israel’s highest judicial body.
ROMANIA
Most Favored Nation?
Two bills introduced in Congress would suspend Romania’s Most Favored Nation (MFN) trade status in hopes of pressuring the country to cut down on its repression of Christians.
“Churches are being bulldozed, Bibles have been recycled into toilet paper, and Christian leaders from various churches have been harassed, arrested, and tortured,” said Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.). Smith, along with Representatives Tony Hall (D-Ohio) and Frank Wolf (R-Va.), are challenging Romania’s MFN status in the House of Representatives. In the Senate, a similar bill is being sponsored by Sens. William Armstrong (R-Colo.), Paul Trible (R-Va.), and Paul Simon (D-Ill.).
The bills would suspend MFN status for six months or until President Reagan feels the country’s human rights situation has improved. However, the Reagan administration supports MFN status to encourage Romania’s relative independence from the Soviet Union in its foreign policy. Because Romania relies heavily on trade with the Smith, left, in Romania. United States, supporters of the bill say suspension of MFN status might pressure the government to lessen its persecution of the church.
THE NETHERLANDS
Denominations Plan to Unite
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Kingdom of the Netherlands plans to unite with two large Reformed bodies in the next few years. The merger plan comes after several years of shrinking membership in the Lutheran denomination.
In the last two years, the 30,000-member denomination lost some 2,000 members. Attendance at worship services is declining, and youth activities have decreased. Fifteen of the church’s 60 congregations are too small to support a pastor.
Sam Dahlgren, of the Lutheran World Federation’s department of church cooperation, said the planned merger might be a “mirror for the future of churches in a secularizing Europe.”
ENGLAND
Christian School Controversy
Government school inspectors have served a “notice of complaint” on four church-run schools in England. If the complaints are upheld, the schools will be forced to close. A fifth school already has been closed.
The complaints involve schools operated primarily by Pentecostal churches. The schools use a curriculum called Accelerated Christian Education (ACE). Some 30 church-related schools in England use the ACE program, created in the 1970s by a Texas pastor.
Inspectors from England’s Ministry of Education say the schools place too much emphasis on religion and not enough on English, math, science, and social studies. They say the schools are failing to educate students to a minimum standard in basic secular subjects.
“I have a wider concern than government minimum school standards,” said Arthur Roderick, an ACE representative. “As a Christian, I am here to serve God in encouraging a school’s curriculum to be biblically based.”
- Pat Robertson
Randy Frame
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How did Christian organizations respond to two of the world’s most severe disasters?
Relief organizations were glad to see 1985 come to an end. Two of history’s most devastating disasters came less than two months apart—earthquakes in Mexico City in September and a volcanic eruption in Colombia in November. More than 30,000 people died in those two disasters.
This one-two punch on the heels of mass famine in Africa tested the resiliency of the disaster-relief community. Private organizations, denominational agencies, and national governments responded. But in many cases the collective response lacked coordination. The perennial problems of large-scale relief efforts surfaced, including duplication of services and the accompanying waste of material and human resources.
Within a week of the Mexico City earthquakes, for example, Mexico’s capital was inundated with supplies that could not be used. “We saw plane after plane unloading what was, literally, junk,” said Larry Glass, director of national health programs for MAP International, a Christian global health agency.
Likewise, following the eruption of the Nevada del Ruiz volcano in Colombia, individuals and organizations sent so many clothes the government made a formal request that no more be sent. “Organizations feel an obligation to respond because their donors expect them to respond,” Glass said, “even if it’s not needed.”
This is not to say that all of Colombia’s needs have been met. An overabundance of short-term emergency supplies is often followed by a scarcity of resources needed for long-term rehabilitation. The rebuilding does not begin in earnest until well after the disaster has ceased grabbing headlines and donor interest has waned.
From a public relations standpoint, however, it is important to take action while a disaster is in the news. Thus, says Stanley Mitton, director of international disaster response for Church World Service, “there is the temptation to get something on the plane and to [publicize] … it in a news release.”
Sometimes getting something on a plane quickly is exactly what is needed. MAP, for example, rushed $800,000 worth of antibiotics into Colombia. (The drugs were not available in the country.) But in most cases donors and organizations help best by providing financial support.
Explains World Concern spokesman Craig Shuck: “Not only is it less expensive to purchase supplies in the country where the disaster has occurred, but it helps stimulate that country’s economy.” Mitton notes, however, that some donors are not content simply to give money. “People like to visualize something tangible flying into the disaster-stricken area.”
The mere climate of a disaster-stricken area works against reasoned judgment and contributes to inefficiency. “In those first few days, people are in a panic,” says World Vision’s Brian Bird. “They may not know what they need. So they say, ‘Give us anything.” But Bird says the biggest reason services are duplicated is lack of coordination among relief organizations—due largely to poor communication.
Unique Challenges
Effective communication is important because each disaster brings its own set of problems. Needs range from clean water to heavy machinery. In some countries, governments monitor relief operations more heavily than in others. Without reliable contacts in a stricken area, a relief effort can be doomed. When they do not have a staff person at the site of the disaster, it is standard procedure for organizations that can afford it to fly somebody in to assess needs and determine how to meet them.
Some maintain that this in itself is wasteful, that organizations should use information already available. But reports coming out of a country are often contradictory. Church World Service got word on November 19, six days after the Colombia earthquake, that foreign medical personnel, tents, blankets, and food were not needed. On November 25, however, World Vision sent a shipment of blankets, tents, and cooking supplies.
Bird explained that World Vision had seven projects in and around Armero, including a child-care project where 156 people were killed. He said that other organizations may have had enough supplies for their relief projects, but that World Vision’s shipments were a direct response to requests from people it knew, including its own staff.
The New York Times reported on November 24 that some volunteer workers said the Colombian government had mishandled the rescue operation. They told of shortages of manpower, medicines, stretchers, and other basic supplies the government allegedly had said it did not need. In the midst of conflicting information, relief organizations operate on reports from their own sources.
Coordinated Efforts
Organizations operate independently to preserve their distinct philosophies of ministry. For example, World Relief, the relief arm of the National Association of Evangelicals, gives evangelism a high priority, and thus works within evangelical church structures wherever possible. “A lot of people in Colombia have come to know the Lord through our efforts,” says Jim Johnson, a World Relief official who oversees donor development. “You just won’t get that with secular organizations.”
In contrast, the goals of Church World Service are not as directly tied to evangelism. “We make it clear that we are the church,” says Mitton, “and we show witness by helping, but we don’t try to convert.”
More and more, however, the disaster-relief community is seeing the merits of a coordinated effort. Evangelical relief experts regard the formation of InterAction in 1984 as a major step forward. InterAction is an umbrella group for private relief organizations, including major evangelical organizations. During a disaster, it serves as a clearinghouse for information not only on what is needed, but also on what is already being done.
In addition, the formation of the Association of Evangelical Relief and Development Organizations (AERDO) has enhanced communication and cooperation among evangelical groups. Not long after the disaster in Colombia, Food for the Hungry told World Vision it had $80,000 worth of antibiotics, but no way to get the medicine to Colombia. The antibiotics ended up on a World Vision shipment.
Food for the Hungry president Tetsunao Yamamori says such exchanges have become standard operating procedure among evangelical agencies. “AERDO has given relief leaders a platform to meet and talk about common problems,” he said. “This has contributed to smoother working relationships.”
Communication has also helped eliminate competition among relief agencies. Says World Relief’s Johnson, “People think we’re constantly competing against each other for funds. That’s blarney. There’s just too much suffering and death in the world for us to be playing those kinds of games.”
Johnson acknowledges there is room for improvement in the coordinating of relief efforts both within and outside the evangelical community. But, he says, “in most of the disasters I’ve seen, the problem has not been overlap. The problem has been we’ve needed ten times more.”
RANDY FRAME
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R. C. Sproul
The Fact that We All Sin Can Create an Atmosphere of False Security.
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In a review of my bookJohnny Come Home, the reviewer observed that, “The only character in the novel who is holy is … God.”
He was right. No human character can be portrayed with any accuracy unless he or she is painted warts and all. A human being without sin is as rare as an incarnate deity. And that the greatest of saints continue to struggle with sin long after their conversions is axiomatic (except to the most militant perfectionists).
The obvious fact that we all sin can, of course, create an atmosphere of false security among us. Sin being commonplace, we can passively accept the idea that we ought not to be too bothered by it lest we surrender our mental health to a self-deprecating neurosis. Yet in our desire to console ourselves and maintain a good self-image, we may push to the back burner the mandate of God: “Be ye holy, for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16; cf. Lev. 11:44–45).
A Sure And Certain Remedy
Evangelical Christians stress the fact that justification is by faith alone and that righteousness is found in Christ alone.
Though these assertions are true, it is equally true that the faith that justifies us brings forth fruit in our lives. The slogan of the Reformation was that we are justified by faith alone; but not by a faith that is alone. The moment true faith is present in the heart of the believer, the process of sanctification begins; the Christian is being conformed to the image of Christ. We are becoming holy. And if we are not becoming holy, then Christ is not in us and our profession of faith is empty.
Martin Luther gave the following analogy: When we are justified it is as though a doctor had just administered a sure and certain remedy for a fatal disease. Though the patient would still endure a temporary struggle with the residual effects of the illness, the outcome would no longer be in doubt. The physician pronounces the patient cured even though a rehabilitation process must still be carried out.
So it is with our justification. In Christ God pronounces us just by the imputation of the merits of Christ. Along with that declaration God administers something to us—his Holy Spirit—which begins immediately to bring us to holy living.
Unholy Pursuits Of Holiness
The New Testament contains a ringing paradox with respect to sanctification. The Bible says, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12b–13). Notice that there are two agents working here. We are called to work, and God promises to work as well. To be sure, our initial regeneration is accomplished by God alone, but our sanctification involves mutual activity.
The two great heresies that have plagued the church on this matter for centuries are the heresies of activism and quietism. These twin distortions are guilty of eliminating one or the other poles of the paradox. In activism, God’s working is swallowed up by human self-righteousness. In quietism, the human struggle is swallowed up by an automatic divine process.
Activism is the creed of the self-righteous person. He has no need of divine assistance to achieve perfection. Grace is held in contempt, a remedy needed only by weak people. The activist can lift himself up by his own bootstraps. His confidence is in himself and his own moral ability. Perhaps the most arrogant statement the activist can make is: “I don’t need Christ.”
The quietist, on the other hand, insults the Holy Spirit by insisting that God is totally responsible for his progress or lack of it. If the quietist still sins, the unspoken assumption is that God has been lacking in his work. The creed of the quietist is, “Let go and let God.” No struggle is necessary; no resistance to temptation is required. It is God’s job, from beginning to end.
God calls us to the pursuit of holiness. The pursuit is to be undertaken with strength and resolution. We are to resist unto blood. To wrestle with powers. To pummel our bodies, rejoicing in the certainty that the Holy Spirit is within us—helping, disposing, convicting, and encouraging.
To the end that we may be holy.
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Vernon C. Grounds
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C. Stephen Evans presents the thoughts of a professional philosopher on mental health and the faith. But what would a practicing, professional, and Christian counselor say? Vernon C. Grounds, a CHRISTIANITY TODAY contributing editor, is head of the Grounds Counseling Center in Denver. He eloquently set forth his thoughts on the matter at hand in a paper entitled “Christian Perspectives on Mental Illness. Though Grounds wrote the paper years ago, his insights—in today’s “therapeutic society”—are more relevant than ever.
As Christians who are concerned about the problem of mental illness, we must refuse to abandon the distinctive insights, convictions, and objectives of our own faith. We must beware of prostituting the gospel to a sub-biblical end.
Christianity is concerned about human life in its totality, and therefore Christianity is concerned about healthy-mindedness. But—let me be provocatively blunt—fundamentally and finally, Christianity is not concerned about the individual’s emotional welfare any more than it is concerned about his physical condition. Fundamentally and finally, Christianity is concerned about the individual’s relationship to God. Fundamentally and finally, it sees him as a creature whose overriding responsibility is to get this wrong relationship readjusted. Fundamentally and finally, it sees him as the bearer of a destiny that stretches out beyond time into eternity, and this destiny is determined by his God-relationship. Thus, Christianity’s perspective on mental health may be summed up in eight brief statements (see box).
These eight statements, I suggest, are some of the distinctive insights, convictions, and objectives of our own faith; and as Christians concerned about mental illness we must refuse to abandon them regardless of how they may be criticized by secular psychotherapy.
Years ago in Germany, Christoph Blumhardt carried on a rather phenomenal ministry of pastoral care. Blessed with rare abilities, he helped hundreds of people regain health of body, mind, and spirit. Individuals who could not come to him at Bad Boll would write to him asking his counsel and prayer. Here is his reply to a woman who had requested intercession for an afflicted friend.
“I increasingly feel we should not pray too urgently for health and help in illness, but rather for our right attitude toward God in order to make the streams of living water flow more richly. God is often hindered from doing what he would gladly do if we were more his people serving him. Now that God has caused me to experience so many and such great things, I long for the experience of seeing men care more for his kingdom and take a back seat for themselves. In this way, even illness can become a service for God, and God is again close at hand. I shall faithfully think of your sick friend, but am grateful if she in turn also helps me and wishes even more than her health that God’s right be acknowledged on earth and his will alone be done.”
That, in my opinion, is a classic statement of the Christian perspective on health, whether it be physical or mental.
The Importance of Glorifying God: Eight Thoughts on Mental Health
1. An individual, quite completely free from tension, anxiety, and conflict, may be only a well-adjusted sinner who is dangerously maladjusted to God; and it is infinitely better to be a neurotic saint than a healthy-minded sinner.
2. Healthy-mindedness may be a spiritual hazard that keeps an individual from turning to God precisely because he has no acute sense of need.
3. Emotional illness springing ultimately—ultimately!—from the rift that sin has driven between Creator and creature may prove a disguised blessing, a crisis that compels an individual to face the issues of his divine relationship and eternal destiny.
4. Thus, in a choice between spiritual renewal and psychic recovery, Christianity unhesitatingly assigns priority to the spiritual dimension of personality.
5. Mental illness may be an experience that drives a believer into a deeper faith commitment; hence, mental illness may sometimes be a gain rather than a loss.
6. Tension, conflict, and anxiety, even to the point of mental illness, may be a cross voluntarily carried in God’s service.
7. No psychic healing is complete unless it is acknowledged as God’s gift and he is praised for it.
8. Health of mind or body is of value only as it is used to serve and glorify God.
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C. Stephen Evans
The Goal of the Christian Counselor Is Not to Help People Become Merely “Normal”
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We live in a “therapeutic society.”
Does your child have trouble completing his homework? Take him to see a psychologist who works with learning problems. Does your spouse have a problem with alcohol? Persuade him (or her) to enter an alcohol treatment facility, staffed by skilled psychiatrists. Do you yell at your kids too much? See a psychiatric social worker who specializes in family relationships.
Of course, mental health professionals are often very helpful in dealing with such problems. However, some problems are very difficult to treat. Psychological “cures” are not always possible, and they are certainly not always immediate.
The church has not been immune to the tendency to view problems in a therapeutic vein. Though a certain amount of uneasiness persists, the idea of going to a mental health professional for all kinds of problems is now widely accepted, and various kinds of Christian counseling centers have proliferated.
Christian counselors, like their secular counterparts, are often faced with seemingly intractable, chronic problems. It is true that Christian counselors have some unique resources and approaches in such instances. These resources do not guarantee a cure, though; sometimes, in fact, the unique Christian resources do not bear fruit in a cure.
To see this, consider the goals of the Christian counselor. When I speak of counselors here, I do not mean only professional counselors. All of us have the opportunity to be counselors. Parents counsel their children; Sunday school teachers and youth group leaders often provide invaluable counsel; friends counsel friends. So thinking about the goals of Christian counseling is something that ought to concern all Christians, and not simply professional counselors.
The Cure Is Not All
In our therapeutic society, with psychological problems often construed on a medical model, it is tempting to see the one and only goal of counseling as “curing” people, or at least in terms of eliminating problems. And this is very often correct.
When people are suffering, it is proper to try to alleviate the suffering. There is no difference in principle here between suffering that is caused by physical debilities and suffering that has its origins in psychological impairments. You should attempt to help someone who cannot perform adequately at a job because of an irrational fear of being out of doors, just as you should attempt to help someone who could not do a job adequately because of an infection.
There are times, however, when even the expert counselor is at sea. People cannot always be cured, problems cannot always be eliminated. Psychological problems, unlike many physical ailments, tend to be of a chronic or recurring nature. Such problems sometimes are very tenacious and deep-rooted, responding only slowly and gradually, if at all. Many Christians, even with professional help, struggle for years with depression. Others battle mood swings, or phobias, or a painful inability to function in a group situation. What should the goal of the Christian counselor be in this situation?
The Goodness Of Weakness
We may gain some valuable hints from the apostle Paul’s “thorn in the flesh.” He prayed earnestly for God to eliminate his problem, but the answer he received was, “My grace is sufficient for thee; for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” This experience led Paul to accept and even rejoice in his problem: “Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” Paul had learned that “when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:7–10).
Though there are many theories, we do not really know the nature of Paul’s thorn. It is very probable that his problem was physical in nature. But even if if was physical, it certainly caused great psychological suffering for Paul. Regardless of Paul’s specific problem, what is important is the underlying principle: God sometimes works through our human weaknesses, rather than eliminating those weaknesses. This principle seems just as applicable to psychological weaknesses as it is to physical problems.
This has profound implications for the goals of Christian counseling. It means that there are times when we ought to look at our psychological problems as part of the providential ordering of our lives by God. God’s strength is made perfect in our psychological weaknesses, as well as our physical weaknesses. Therefore, there are times when the proper goal of the Christian counselor is not the elimination of a problem but is helping an individual discover how a problem can be the occasion for spiritual growth.
The individual must learn how to live with the problem and deal with it, not in his own strength, but with the help of God’s grace. Learning to live with a problem in this way can make an individual better suited to accomplish significant tasks for the kingdom of God. Certainly living with a problem in this way can make an individual better suited for participation in that kingdom.
“Odd” Saints
All of us can probably think of Christians who were a little “odd,” and were able to do great things for God in part because of their oddness. They learned better than most what it meant to depend on God rather than themselves or even other people.
Charles Spurgeon is a well-known example. He suffered from prolonged bouts of depression, as well as anxiety about all sorts of common problems, including finances. Spurgeon’s psychological and physical ailments were so debilitating that he frequently was confined to bed for weeks. However, Spurgeon came to see these problems as part of God’s working in his life. His sufferings enabled him to comfort and encourage those who were similarly afflicted. He discovered that his periods of depression invariably preceded a time when God blessed his ministry in a larger way. The depression actually became a sort of “John the Baptist” for him, heralding a new and mighty outpouring of God’s Spirit. This psychologically frail man, who died at age 57, published over 3,500 sermons, authored 135 books, and was regarded by many as the outstanding preacher of his generation.
The nineteenth-century Christian philosopher and theologian, Søren Kierkegaard, provides another interesting example of a man whose psychological problems provided a rich harvest for the kingdom of God. Kierkegaard suffered all his life with what he termed his melancholy, a condition that today would doubtless be described as that of chronic depression. It is not too hard to trace the origins of some of his psychological problems. His relationship with his mother was very distant, almost to the point of being nonexistent, and he had great difficulty relating to women. His relation to his father, on the other hand, was very intense.
As a young boy, Kierkegaard spent a great deal of time with his father. Instead of being allowed to play outside with other children, the young boy would frequently be taken for indoor “walks” with his father. The two would stride up and down in the house, with the father’s rich imagination enabling him to describe, in great detail, various sections of the city they were “traversing.”
The result was an intensely reflective child. When the father slipped pictures of the crucified Christ into pictures of childhood heroes that young Søren played with, it is not surprising that at an early age the boy was gripped with a terrifying conviction that it is the fate of the good to suffer and die. How could it be otherwise, when the best of all had suffered so?
The point of recounting this is not to diagnose Kierkegaard’s psychological ills, but rather to show that his suffering was real and severe. The interesting thing about Kierkegaard was the way he responded to his problems.
As a young man, Kierkegaard fell in love with Regine Olsen, and was engaged. He soon decided, however, that he had made a mistake; that he was not fit for marriage. He did not think that Regine would ever be able truly to understand him or his problems. He consulted with his physician, who advised him that it was unlikely that he would ever be cured of his ailments.
At this point, Kierkegaard could have become angry with God or his father. He did neither. He knew that his father’s parenting, however poor the results, had been inspired by love. And he concluded that God must be asking him to sacrifice his love for Regine, just as Abraham had been called by God to sacrifice Isaac. He had been called to the single life, to be celibate for the kingdom of God. His psychological peculiarities were the means God had employed to call him to a special mission. He continued to love Regine, but he could not express that love in the “normal” way. He was to be a writer.
And a writer he did indeed become. A torrent of literature fell from his pen—philosophical, theological, and devotional volumes—all designed, as he put it, to “reintroduce Christianity into Christendom.” It would not have been possible for Kierkegaard to write as sensitively and movingly as he did about the role of suffering and sacrifice in the Christian life had he not personally suffered and sacrificed as he did.
Afraid Of Flying
Though I do not claim any great accomplishments such as Spurgeon’s or Kierkegaard’s for the kingdom of God, I have personally experienced the way God can speak to us through our psychological ailments. Like John Madden, Mike Royko, and Gene Shalit, I have an airplane phobia. I am tempted to steal a line from Lewis Grizzard, one of my favorite columnists, and say that it’s not flying that scares me, but crashing and burning. That would not be true, however; I am really afraid of flying.
This is not a problem I am proud of or glad about. It complicates my life in many ways. A simple act of accepting a speaking invitation becomes an exercise in will power and courage. I have attempted to get help and, in time, the problem can perhaps be eliminated. (I have plans to fly this year, but all the air crashes in the summer of 1985 have not helped.)
In the meantime, it is a problem I am trying to live with and deal with. In the course of doing so, God has taught me some things. He has taught me that the possibility of my death at any moment is no abstract theory, but the sober truth about the human condition. He has taught me that I must trust him to watch over my family: I am not really indispensable. He has taught me more of what it really means to believe in his providential care, as I acknowledge that I cannot always control the circumstances surrounding my own life. Trust in the pilot is hardly faith in God, but both involve putting yourself into someone else’s hands.
The lesson to be learned from this is not that people should want to be abnormal or have problems, and it is certainly not that Christians should be insensitive to suffering, or fail to try to alleviate suffering. It is rather that we should be more open to the ways in which God can and does use and work through our human weaknesses, both for our own personal growth and to help others.
We can perhaps be grateful that people like Spurgeon and Kierkegaard did not live in a therapeutic age, where they would have been treated (perhaps even hospitalized) until they were “normal.” We can be even more grateful that these people were open to seeing the hand of Providence in their afflictions, and that they were willing to suffer in order to become powerful instruments for God. We should all keep it uppermost in our minds that the primary goal of a Christian counselor is not to help people become merely “normal,” but to help them love God with all their hearts, minds, and souls.
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Sensitive Christians would like to think that no one will be damned—but is that biblical?
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Non-Christians regularly object to the teaching that those who have never heard the gospel may be condemned to hell. Many Christians don’t like it either. In fact, universalism—the belief that everyone, sooner or later, will be reconciled to God and saved by him—has in this century quietly become part of the orthodoxy of many Christian thinkers and groups.
But if all people will eventually be saved, why should they sacrifice to become Christians in this life? Why, indeed, should we endure hardship to evangelize them? Theologian J. I. Packer, author of Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (IVP), takes a careful look at the appeal and the problems of universalism.
The problem of individual human destinies has always pressed hard upon thoughtful Christians who take the Bible seriously, for Scripture affirms these three things:
1. The reality of hell as a state of eternal destructive punishment in which God’s judicial retribution for sin is directly experienced.
2. The certainty of hell for all who choose it by rejecting Jesus Christ and his offer of eternal life.
3. The justice of hell as a fit divine infliction upon humanity for our lawless and cruel deeds.
It was, to be sure, hell-deserving sinners whom Jesus came to save, and all who put their trust in him may know themselves forgiven, justified, and accepted forever—and thus delivered from the wrath to come. But what of those who lack this living faith? Those who are not just hypocrites in the church, about whose destiny Christ is very clear, but “good pagans” who lived before the Incarnation, or who through no fault of their own never heard the Christian message, or who met it only in an incomplete and distorted form? Or what about those who lived in places (modern Albania, for instance) where Christianity was a capital offense, or who suffered from ethnonationalistic or socio-cultural conditioning against the faith, or who were so resentful of Christians for hurting them in one way or another that they were never emotionally free for serious thought about Christian truth? Are they all necessarily lost?
Mixed Answers
To this question Christians have given mixed answers:
• Some have maintained that all unbelievers go to hell because, being sinners like everyone else, they deserve to. The indictment is unanswerable, but is the conclusion inescapable? Not all have thought so.
• A number of Christian thinkers have opened the door a crack—sometimes, indeed, more than a crack—to find a place for “good pagans” in God’s kingdom. The church’s earliest defenders of the faith saw Greek philosophy as a God-taught preparation for the gospel among the Gentiles. They affirmed the salvation of Socrates, Plato, and their ilk through faith in the revelation they received of the preincarnate Word. This view still has its defenders.
• Many have urged the hope of universal salvation of infants through Christ’s Cross—moving on from Augustine’s and Dante’s idea that unbaptized children who died would miss heaven but would be spared the pains of hell.
• The official Roman Catholic view was that there is no salvation outside the Roman communion and apart from its sacramental life. But the Council of Trent’s statement that believers in the truth who, for whatever reason, cannot be baptized may yet be saved through “baptism of desire” (i.e., desire for baptism) has been further developed by Vatican II: “Those who, while guiltlessly ignorant of Christ’s gospel and of his Church, sincerely seek God and are brought by the influence of grace to perform his will as known by the dictates of conscience, can achieve eternal salvation.” The phrase “guiltlessly ignorant” points to ignorance that is invincible—that is, dominant and incurable, yet due wholly to conditioning, not to negligence or ill will or any intention, direct or remote, to disobey God. This notion was originally devised to explain how Protestants could be saved. But it is now used to affirm the possibility of salvation in any religion.
(One Protestant thinker hospitable to this idea was C. S. Lewis: In The Last Battle, Aslan says he views as offered to himself all service sincerely rendered to the false god Tash. Some Catholic theologians base their confidence of universal salvation on this line of thought.)
• Among Protestants, some Arminians hold that grace sufficient for salvation is given to everyone without exception, those who do not hear the gospel no less than those who do, so that everyone’s salvation is in principle possible.
• Some Calvinists have guessed that God regenerates a certain number of unevangelized adults, bringing them to repentance and faith through general revelation alone.
• More recently, Karl Barth taught that in Christ crucified, all mankind was reprobated and condemned, and in Christ risen, all mankind is elected and justified. This has given a great fillip to explicit universalism—a conclusion that Barth himself seems to have avoided only by will power.
(Not all theologians, however, are as strong-willed as Barth. In much of today’s Protestantism, belief in universal salvation, as the fruit and measure of Christ’s redemptive victory, has become the standard view.)
Pressure Points
The problem of the nonbeliever’s destiny is acutely felt at present in the Western churches. There are at least three reasons for this:
Pastorally, pressure is felt because post-Christian pluralism and anti-Christian alternatives are always on our doorstep. We rub shoulders with people of other, ethnic faiths; with people who are “into” cults; with disillusioned ex-Christians; with hostile scientific humanists.
In the mainline churches we find a Pandora’s boxful of mutated, not to say mutilated, Christianities: products of liberal randomness and radical reaction, of hermeneutical indiscipline, and sometimes, one fears, of sheer incompetence. Among evangelicals there remains something of a consensus on essentials, but evangelicals seem to be a quarter or less of the professing Christians in America and the Commonwealth, and outside evangelical circles one hears little more than what Eeyore called a “confused noise.” How much of the faith of the Scriptures, we wonder, do those nurtured amid the confusion ever come to know?
Nor is this all. The public media, the national education systems, and the literary establishments are resolutely secular, which means that men, women, and children—especially children—are being powerfully conditioned against biblical Christianity. What should we say of the nonbelief found among the victims of this ideological juggernaut? They did not create the secular ideology. It created them, molding them to its own sub-Christian shape.
To generous Christian hearts it seems nightmarish that unbelief resulting from the collapse of Christian culture round a person’s head could ruin that person’s soul.
The problem presses. What does the Bible say?
Theologically, pressure is felt because Christianity faces an upsurge of Islam and other great ethnic religions—all of which resent and reject Christianity’s exclusive claim to be final truth from God for all mankind. As the world’s population explodes, the percentage of our race that gives allegiance to Christianity keeps shrinking. This not only makes triumphalism impossible, but it also makes the universal significance of Jesus Christ seem problematical to many.
One response is the claim that Christ may be perceived, or posited, in existing ethnic faiths. In other words, these faiths should be understood as being already in essence what Christianity itself is. This solves the problem of relating Christianity to other faiths by the device of deft definition. But it flies in the face of the fact that the closer one looks at ethnic religions, the more different from Christianity, both in ends proposed and in means to them, they are found to be. It leaves us with a new set of questions:
Should ordinary adherents of ethnic religions (who deny the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Atonement, and salvation by grace through faith whenever these tenets are put to them) be counted as “anonymous Christians”? Though they may be invincibly and therefore excusably ignorant, can we say that they are thus (because of their sincerity) being saved by the Christ whom, if they have heard of him at all, they reject? If so, why evangelize them? What is the point of asking anyone to change religions, if all religions are at bottom Christianity in disguise?
What does a Hindu or Muslim gain by becoming a Christian? Nothing, it seems, that he really did not have before. But shall we then discount the testimony of Hindu and Muslim converts that their conversion was a passage from death to life? Shall we conclude that the old liberal and theosophic notion of all religions climbing the same mountain and meeting at the top is true after all?
The questions press. Again we ask, what does the Bible say?
Strategically, pressure is felt because Protestantism is radically split about mission. Mission is shorthand for the task that the church is sent into the world to do in Christ’s name, for love of God and neighbor. Two views clash as to what mission involves:
One view stands in line with the patristic, counter-Reformation Roman Catholic, and last-century Protestant missionary movements. It urges that the mandate is, first, to evangelize and plant churches; second, to relieve need at all levels, giving visibility and credibility to the good news of the Savior who makes us care for others; and third, to Christianize pagan cultures.
The view of some moderns, however, defines the mission as, first, to seek justice, peace, and prosperity in communities where these are lacking; second, to engage in dialogue with non-Christian religions in order to understand them and show them respect; and third, to nurture Christians and extend the church if time and circumstances permit—which, it is acknowledged, they may not.
The first view has now the Lausanne Covenant as its charter. The second reflects what was put forward by the WCC-sponsored conference at Bangkok on Salvation Today. Which set of priorites is right? What does the Bible say?
Ultimate Optimism
Subordinating evangelism to socio-political concerns makes sense only if universalism is true. The universalist idea that all people will eventually be saved by grace is a comforting belief. It relieves anxiety about the destiny of pagans, atheists, devotees of non-Christian religions, victims of post-Christian secularity—the millions of adults who never hear the gospel and the millions of children who die before they can understand it. All sensitive Christians would like to embrace universalism; it would get us off a very painful hook. Let us see what can be said in its favor.
Modern universalism’s basic idea is not that no one deserves to be damned, but that everyone will eventually be brought in humble gratitude to accept the acceptance with God that Christ’s redemptive death won for them. Though hell is real, it will ultimately have no tenants.
Roman Catholic universalists hold that man’s natural inclination toward goodness and God continues despite the Fall. It is sustained by universal grace and constitutes implicit faith—an openness to God through which Christ and his salvation will in due course, here or hereafter, be received even by Judas (a good test case by which to measure universalist reasoning).
Protestant universalists often say explicitly that those who leave this world in unbelief enter hell, but then exit, having been brought to their senses, encountered Christ, and embraced him while there. The essential claim is that hell does for the faithless what the Roman Catholic purgatory does for believers: it fits them for the enjoyment of heaven.
Universalism is the ultimate optimism of grace, outstripping any form of mainstream Protestantism, Calvinist or Arminian. For universalists, hell is never the ultimate state. It is a stage on the journey home. Through post-mortem encounter with Christ (a second chance for some, a first chance for others), God sovereignly calls and saves everyone out of what the New Testament calls “eternal punishment” and “eternal destruction” (Matt. 25:46; 2 Thess. 1:9, where destruction certainly means, not annihilation, but a state of conscious ruin). No one is finally lost. Hell ends up empty.
Counterarguments
How is this view of hell’s empty landscape supported? No biblical passage unambiguously asserts universal final salvation. Universalism is in fact a theological speculation that discounts the evident meaning of some New Testament passages in favor of what is claimed to be the overall thrust of New Testament thinking: that God’s retributive justice toward men is always a disciplinary expression of redeeming love.
It would be nice to believe that; but Scripture nowhere suggests it when speaking of divine judgment, and the counterarguments seem overwhelmingly cogent:
1. Does not universalism ignore the constant biblical stress on the decisiveness and finality of this life’s decisions for the determining of eternal destiny? Can this emphasis be evaded? Surely not.
2. Does not universalism condemn Christ himself, who warned men to flee hell at all costs, as having been either incompetent (ignorant that all were finally going to be saved) or immoral (knowing but concealing it, so as to bluff people into the kingdom through fear)? Can this dilemma be overcome? Surely not.
3. Does not the universalist idea of sovereign grace saving all nonbelievers after death raise new problems? If God’s ability to bring all humans to faith eventually is posited, why would he not do it in this life in every case where the gospel is known? But if it is beyond God’s power to convert all who know the gospel here, on what grounds can we be sure that he will be able to do it hereafter? Can any universalist’s doctrine of God be made fully coherent? Surely not.
4. Does not the thoughtful Christian conscience reject universalism, just because one cannot apply it to oneself? “I dare not say to myself that if I forfeit the opportunity this life affords I shall ever have another; and therefore I dare not say so to another man,” wrote James Denney. Is there any way around this? Surely not.
Universalism, therefore, will not work. This life’s decisions must be deemed to be in every case decisive. And thus, proclaiming the gospel to our fallen, guilty, and hell-bent fellows must be the first service we owe them in light of their first and basic need. The proclamation must have the priority that the older, the historic catholic, mission strategy gave it.
“I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians … to preach the gospel,” wrote Paul. “For ‘every one who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.’ But how are men to call upon him … of whom they have never heard?… Faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ” (Rom. 1:14–15, 10:13–14, 17, citing Joel 2:32).
Light for All
But could God, in particular cases, work with and through the light of general revelation—light that comes to every human being—to evoke repentance and faith, and thus to bring about the salvation of some to whom no verbal message about God forgiving sins has ever come?
The question is prompted by Peter’s statement: “In every nation anyone who fears him and does right is acceptable” (Acts 10:35). It is supported by Paul’s assertion: “[God] did not leave himself without witness” (14:17). Add to that his strong declaration of general revelation from God to all mankind in Romans 1:18–2:16. Consider the acknowledgment and worship of Israel’s God by Melchizedek, Jethro, Job, Abimelech, Baalam, Naaman, the sailors in Jonah’s boat, Cyrus, and Nebuchadrezzar. Compare John’s description of the preincarnate Word as “the true light that enlightens every man” (John 1:9; cf. v. 4) with his analysis of the sinner’s judgment as flight from the light, while “he who does what is true comes to the light” (3:19–21). That God will judge us all according to what we have done with the light we were given, and that that is supremely just on his part, I take for granted.
In Christianity and World Religions, Sir Norman Anderson states the question as it relates to non-Christian worshipers: “Might it not be true of the follower of some other religion that the God of all mercy had worked in his heart by his Spirit, bringing him in some measure to realize his sin and need for forgiveness, and enabling him, in his twilight as it were, to throw himself on God’s mercy?”
The answer seems to be yes, it might be true, as it may well have been true for at least some of the Old Testament characters. If ever it is true, such worshipers will learn in heaven that they were saved by Christ’s death and that their hearts were renewed by the Holy Spirit, and they will join the glorified church in endless praise of the sovereign grace of God. Christians since the second century have hoped so, and perhaps Socrates and Plato are in this happy state even now—who knows?
But we have no warrant to expect that God will act thus in any single case where the gospel is not known or understood. Therefore our missionary obligation is not one whit diminished by our entertaining this possibility. Nor will this idea make the anti-Christian thrust and consequent spiritual danger of non-Christian religions seem to us any less than it did before.
If we are wise, we shall not spend much time mulling over this notion. Our job, after all, is to spread the gospel, not to guess what might happen to those to whom it never comes. Dealing with them is God’s business: he is just, and also merciful, and when we learn, as one day we shall, how he has treated them we shall have no cause to complain. Meantime, let us keep before our minds mankind’s universal need of forgiveness and new birth, and the graciousness of the “whosoever will” invitations of the gospel. And let us redouble our efforts to make known the Christ who saves to the uttermost all who come to God by him.
James I. Packer is professor of historical and systematic theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, and a senior editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. A brief biography of Dr. Packer appears in Christopher Catherwood’s Five Evangelical Leaders (Harold Shaw, 1985).
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Can we gain more than a glimpse of peace in 1986?
Thrust into A.D. 1986, we each can profitably ask how we can cooperate with God as we pray, “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Sweeping into its holy embrace everything that satisfies his loving heart, God’s will at least demands that in 1986 we recognize the mandate implied in the promise, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” Lying behind that New Testament Greek word for peace is the Hebrew shalom. Whatever else it includes, God’s will is a demand for shalom—shalom on earth, shalom in history, shalom now as well as in eternity.
The word is richer than its common translation, “peace.” Perhaps we should leave it untranslated, as we often do with agape and koinonia. Shalom is an all-inclusive peace, peace between God and men, peace within our soul, peace among neighbors and nations, peace even in nature when lamb and lion lie down together.
Far from being primarily an inward and religious experience, shalom “in its most common use is an emphatically social concept” (von Rad). It is a wholistic state of health and harmony, safety and security, prosperity and piety, justice and joy, well-being and worship, fulfillment and freedom. It spells freedom from poverty, conflict, disease, inequity, and oppression. Where shalom is present, sin and sorrow are absent. Where the sword is at rest, where reconciliation has been completely effected, where righteousness prevails, and where people rejoice together, there shalom reigns. And there, in a society where his will is done, a God-glorifying order of human life prevails.
Psalm 85 beautifully depicts this: “Love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other. Faithfulness springs forth from the earth, and righteousness looks down from heaven. The Lord will indeed give what is good, and our land will yield its harvest. Righteousness goes before him and prepares the way for his steps” (NIV).
Rarely in history, even in the history of Israel and Christanity, has that idyllic state of shalom been achieved. Yet here and there across the centuries we catch tantalizing glimpses of it, faintest foreshadowings of that time when by the grace and power of God shalom will become a global reality. Under Solomon the Jewish people enjoyed proleptically a flickering fulfillment of Messiah’s government as sketched in Psalm 72. The righteous sovereign whose justice and compassion were like rain upon the mown grass championed the afflicted and the needy, squelched violence, and changed shalom from far-off vision into temporary fact. William Penn founded a New World colony where at first force and fraud were unknown, a sort of peaceable kingdom in which native Indians and white settlers intermingled tranquilly as brothers and sisters of the same human family. But, unfortunately, these hope-inspiring glimpses of shalom faded like desert mirages.
If we begin 1986 determined to develop into more productive disciples, we need not limit ourselves to any goal less than serving as shalom-makers. Malignant marriages need this healing ministry. So do families fractured by discord, and neighborhoods numbed by smoldering animosities. In offices and factories where strained civility camouflages malice, and in churches that belie the Good News of reconciliation, shalom is the longing of God’s heart, as it is with countries troubled by fierce tensions and periodic violence. The long, sorry list of our planet’s hot spots needs the ministry of those who make shalom. Will we number ourselves among such people?
Impossible Dream?
The mere recital of this overwhelming need tends to induce despair. How can we possibly respond with even microscopic effectiveness to God’s demand for shalom? Our puny efforts seem as futile as fighting a forest fire with a water pistol.
What realistically can we do? We can pray. The least—and maybe the best—service that we can render as shalom-makers is to obey Paul’s directive in 1 Timothy 2.
“I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession, and thanksgiving be made for everyone—for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (NIV).
Paul gives priority to prayer. Using a cluster of terms to present its various aspects, he urges us to engage in it first of all. So to relegate prayer to the edge of our busy lives is to disobey a plain apostolic imperative.
And this service is to be performed for the whole human family—especially for the public officials of every government on the globe.
The result? A civic order that reflects the will of God. Paul does not mean to downplay the need for political involvement and courageous reform. No doubt he would have approved the decision of that distinguished scholar and educator, Frank Gaebelein, who felt bound by conscience as a Christian to join the march to Selma in 1955. But Paul concentrates on prayer, highlighting its practice as the indispensable factor in creating a peaceful society characterized by tranquility, justice, and godliness.
The purpose of such prayer is a surprise: it is evangelism. Paul means it in its full-orbed sense of bringing men and women into the redeemed life that is abundant and eternal. Prayer implements God’s passion for our salvation: “The fundamental idea contained in [the word salvation] is the removal of dangers menacing to life and the consequent placing of life in conditions favorable to its free and healthy expansion” (Sanday and Headlam on Romans).
What, then, can we do in 1986 so that God’s will “be done on earth as it is in heaven”? We can pray. We can pray with a concern that earnestly brings to God our own needs together with those of our families, our churches, our missionary friends overseas. We can pray, moreover, with a concern for economic and social issues. We can pray with a concern for those who are the movers and shakers of our world, the policy-making power brokers. We can pray that the Holy Spirit will give them wisdom, compassion, and tenacity. We can pray the words of Saint Francis: “Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.” We can ask God to empower us with the qualities we request for “kings and all those in authority.” We can pray to become shalom-makers.
Decision
We can. But will we?
Suppose we resolve that in 1986 we will assign to prayer a top-of-the-agenda priority. Suppose that we each dedicate ourselves to a kind of crusade. Suppose that minus flying banners and TV publicity we Christians in the United States join together in a continual ministry of prayer. Many of us in our country are styled “born again” believers; Gallup alleges our number to be in the millions. Suppose we spend no less than five minutes a day in focused intercession for “kings and all those in authority.” Suppose we do this doggedly day after day every day of 1986.
Suppose we spend no less time interceding for public officials than we spend in criticizing them. Certainly “kings and all those in authority” are neither infallible nor sacrosanct. They are mortals, tainted with original sin, subject to ambition and arrogance. They can be stupidly short-sighted and deplorably vindictive, bent on wielding power for their own ends.
But Proverbs assures us that in the mystery of God’s actions with our race, “The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases” (21:1). So when we pray we can take it for granted that God is working through governmental officials as they form policies. Those power brokers can be his unwitting instruments even though, like their ancient prototype, Cyrus, they may not believe in the true and living God.
And if our faith in an all-controlling Providence falters, we can read Isaiah 45 again and be spurred on to persevere in our intercession. Of that pagan Persian emperor God says, “I will strengthen you, though you have not acknowledged me, so that from the rising of the sun to its setting men may know there is none besides me.”
Suppose that, while recognizing the radically different attitudes that prevail among us regarding national defense and arms control, we nevertheless take the psalmist’s stand: “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of our Lord.” Suppose that—whether self-designated evangelicals or fundamentalists or ecumenists—we believe what Paul writes to the Corinthians, and believe it sincerely enough to make his teaching the major resource in our battles for shalom: “Though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.”
And what is the most formidable weapon in the Christian’s armament? Prayer. It is the most potent weapon we have for combating the evil powers that war against shalom. Suppose, then, we fight with this weapon, making prayer the dynamic that energizes all our struggles for peace, justice, and freedom. Relying on God who acts in response to prayer, we can exclaim confidently with Jahaziel, “The battle is not yours but God’s” (2 Chron. 20:15).
A hymn by H. F. Chorley concisely voices our aspirations for shalom and our commitment to the task of being shalom-makers:
God the Omnipotent! King, who ordainest
Thunder thy clarion, the lightning thy sword;
Show forth thy pity on high where thou reignest;
Give to us peace in our time, O Lord.
VERNON GROUNDS,1Vernon Grounds is president emeritus of Denver Conservative Baptist Seminary (still teaching ethics and counseling), editor of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship’s Theological Students Fellowship Bulletin, and president of Evangelicals for Social Action.CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
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Some of us are reluctant to take guests into our attics. (And certainly for good reason!) But for the sake of history, let me set ceremony aside and have you look into one very special cluttered corner.
Our attic reminiscence really begins 40 years ago.
I had accepted Christ in February of 1945 in my mother’s childhood church, and shortly thereafter began attending Saturday night rallies in Danville, Illinois, sponsored by a new youth movement called Youth for Christ.
As a result of these energetic programs geared to total commitment, I made my decision to enter the ministry. In the fall of 1946 I began classes at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary. A young farm boy now living in a great metropolitan center like Chicago, I was excited about visiting and experiencing some of the vibrant churches of the time.
Harry Ironside was in his mature years of preaching at Moody Church, and no young seminarian could pass up the opportunity to hear at least a few of his powerful sermons. And the uncompromising mark of Paul Rader was still firm on the Chicago Gospel Tabernacle, although he was no longer pastor.
But it was the Midwest Bible Church, a converted garage on the west side, where I finally decided to settle in. Torrey M. Johnson and Robert A. Cook were pastors.
Torrey was immersed in the Youth for Christ movement he had helped begin two years earlier (see CT, Nov. 8, 1985). And he became president of an organization (YFC) with high-powered rallies extending beyond Chicago, across the United States, and around the world.
Every Saturday night I attended the local rallies, some at Moody Church and some at Orchestra Hall, and discovered a vitality of Christian conviction and witness that had been so lacking in the small denominational church where I had grown up. Looking back, I realize I was one small drop in the parachurch tidal wave that swept across the church in the last half-century.
“Did you have any idea of the impact the movement would have on church leadership?” I asked Torrey as we reminisced about our mutual pasts. “No,” Torrey responded. He simply had a burden for youth, especially rootless servicemen.
We then talked about the spiritual heartbeat of those days, and I felt I was reliving my introduction to vital Christianity.
Which brings me back to my attic. As I find old church bulletins from the Midwest Bible Church and Moody Church, along with assorted Youth for Christ announcements, I am reminded again that it was my friend Evan Welsh who challenged Torrey Johnson, then a freshman football player at Wheaton College, to give his life to the Lord’s service. It was Torrey who challenged Billy Graham to enter the evangelistic ministry. And wherever you go today, you will find someone whom Billy Graham has pointed to Christ.
There are some things in my attic I am glad I kept. They are reminders—my stones of remembrance if you will—telling me that when we are faithful in our work for Christ, one contact may indeed change the world.
They are also a wonderful source of accountability. The message of hope given to me 40 years ago is not mine to keep. It is mine to give.
That is the wonder of our great commission.
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SPEAKING OUT offers responsible Christians a forum. It does not necessarily reflect the views of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
In Megatrends, John Naisbitt pointed the way to a worldwide economy: Economically independent nations are melting rapidly into interdependence, he said. To ignore this international trading community is to commit commercial suicide.
A recent U.S. News and World Report cover story proclaimed that while some industries are being destroyed by overseas competition, others are “proving it possible to chalk up profits in nose-to-nose contests with foreigners.”
Economic intelligence foresees the inevitability of a global economy. Yet almost ironically, U.S. Christians are becoming isolationist. Big business plows billions of dollars into overseas operations. But as secular society looks outward, evangelical Christians tend toward spiritual introspection.
The current worldwide outlook should open evangelicals’ eyes. Here are four questions to help us as we reassess our mission.
Keeping Pace
First, how will our exploding world hear the gospel?
In the International Bulletin of Missionary Research (Jan. 1985), British en cyclopedist of world mission, David Barrett, reported that Islam and Hinduism are growing at the same rate as world population, but Christianity is slipping slightly behind.
World Concern’s Tom Sine reached the same conclusion. He wrote: “More than two billion people have never heard a witness of the gospel. In many parts of the world, the population is growing faster than the church’s ability to evangelize” (World Christian, July–August 1985).
It cannot be God’s will to feed the fatted church and starve the spiritually malnourished of our world. Pop stars send millions to the starving world, while Christians invest their wealth in buildings and programs.
Reinforcements
Second, who will replace a generation of retiring missionaries?
According to the best research, the growth in missionary personnel is not keeping pace with the population explosion. Lou Barilotti addressed the problem of a shrinking missionary force in the International Journal of Frontier Missions (I/1). By 1994 more than 30,000 missionaries will retire. Only about 5,000 will step into their shoes.
At the conclusion of World War II, between 20,000 and 30,000 missionaries went to every corner of the globe. Now as they conclude their life’s work, their task remains unfinished.
Meanwhile most missionary-sending agencies are desperately calling for more volunteers. For example, the Sudan Interior Mission aims to double its roster from 1,006 to 2,000 by the year 1993. And The Evangelical Alliance Mission is calling for 1,300 new missionaries by 1990.
Ways And Means
Third, who will give to make this missionary advance a reality?
World Christian (July-August 1985) estimated that most Christians give about 2.4 percent of their income to missions. Some denominations designate less than 1 percent of their income for overseas operations.
In the United Kingdom, the situation is worse. Sixty percent of all British missions are in financial trouble. Meager missionary salaries have been sliced in half. There is just not enough money to go around.
In our age of affluence, evangelical churches grow palatial while a pittance is set aside for missions. We are bankrolling an evangelical boom at home and sending nickels and dimes overseas.
First Church
Fourth, how can churches meet the need for missionaries and money?
The answer lies with the evangelical churches. In the Evangelical Missions Quarterly (July 1985), missions pastor Paul Borthwick said: “Many young people get their ‘call’ to missions in Christian college organizations, or at the Urbana missionary conferences. That’s great, but I am chagrined that so few of the church’s best people are selected and called forth by the local church.”
Similar sentiments were put forward by Wood Phillips, missions pastor of Grace Church in Edina, Minnesota: “It is the Holy Spirit who calls the candidate and the church who confirms the call” (Evangelical Missions Quarterly, April 1985).
The Great Omission is the title of a recent book by Columbia Bible College’s missionary-minded president, Robertson McQuilkin. If America’s missionary force is to be renewed and revitalized, we must not look to the great campus ministries, such as Inter-Varsity and Campus Crusade. Neither must we turn to the Christian colleges. The responsibility rests solely with the church, whom McQuilkin calls, “the interested but uncommitted.”
WAYNE DETZLER1Wayne Detzler is assistant professor of mission at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois.
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Unlisted Spiritual Gifts
I think the apostle Paul missed a few good bets when he was putting together his list of spiritual gifts.
In our congregation, the gift of procrastination ranks way ahead of such things as prophecy and preaching. Our board of trustees, for example, has managed to postpone repairing the church roof for two years by convincing the congregation that rainwater actually helps weather hardwood floors. Now that’s a gift!
Most evident, too, among our membership is the gift of buck passing. Why didn’t Grandma Goodwin get the customary African violet when she was hospitalized? Because the pastor didn’t notify the deaconesses, because the “Violet Request Form” hadn’t been reprinted, because the mimeograph machine wasn’t working, because the church secretary hadn’t ordered a replacement part, because the line was always busy when she tried to call.
Then there’s the gift of hindsight. (How could Paul have overlooked that one?) With 20/20 rear vision, virtually every member of our congregation can tell you we should have added a Sunday school wing to the church 15 years ago when prices were a fourth of what they are today.
“Procrastination, buck passing, and hindsight, and the greatest of these is …”—on second thought, I think I’ll stick with Paul’s list.
EUTYCHUS
Marriage: Agape Love
John Stott’s excellent article on “Homosexual ‘Marriage’” [Nov. 22] may need the contribution agape can bring to it. Not only is heterosexual marriage a true ideal because of the nature of man and our original creation, it is also the only sexual relationship sanctioned by the meaning of love as agape.
The one-flesh love of husband and wife is said to be agape; “God is agape”; and “agape love never fails.” This powerful truth illuminates the darkness in which the homosexual invert finds himself.
ROBERT J. WIELAND
Chula Vista, Calif.
The facts of biology buttress the contention that heterosexuality is prescriptively natural and normal and homosexuality is prescriptively unnatural and abnormal. Those who mistakenly think homosexuality is natural and normal fail to make significant and much-needed distinctions between human beings and animals, between prescriptive and descriptive normality, between (what Emerson termed) “the law for man” and “the law for thing.”
HAVEN BRADFORD GOW
Arlington Heights, Ill.
Stott’s article censuring homosexual “marriage” is disturbing. To me, it is incredibly arrogant to decide on God’s behalf which acts of disobedience he will and will not tolerate in born-again Christians: namely, the supposed disobedience of Stott’s homosexual brothers and sisters in Christ.
REV. HAROLD E. BOWER
Cassadaga, N.Y.
I feel indebted to Mr. Stott for his careful and thorough arguments on both sides of the homosexuality question. He comes refreshingly close to acknowledging homosexual orientation in and of itself as an unchosen fact of life for many Christians and therefore outside the realm of morality. However, I don’t see that Paul’s line of reasoning in Romans 13 supports Stott’s contention that “love needs law to guide it.” I find just the opposite to be true.
Yes, I believe Paul objected to homosexuality, and he also regarded women as inferior and Roman slavery as okay. Why is it so inconceivable for evangelical Christians to see Paul’s vision of the gospel as necessarily limited in scope?
PHILIP R. KELLER
Davis, Calif.
Long-standing Christian abhorrence of homosexuality is heightened by the AIDS problem. Militant demands that Christians accept behavior they hate compounds these strong feelings. Some church leaders who rationalize and condone homosexual behavior add to the confusion. We Christians must struggle with morality while holding the door open to all who will hear Christ’s gospel. Christ died for the sins of all but made a clear call for sinners to repent and leave their sinful baggage behind. When homosexuals deny the sinfulness of their behavior, we are stymied in attempts to reach them.
STEPHEN W. EDMONDSON, M.D.
Atlanta, Ga.
Using The Common Cup
The news item on the abandonment of the common cup by a Lutheran seminary [Nov. 22] included a quote from a layman, which gave the rationale for the seminary’s decision. In the Episcopal Church, competent medical authorities have studied the issue repeatedly. No one has ever traced a case of disease communicated through the common cup.
THE REV. PIERRE WHALON
All Souls’ Episcopal Church
North Versailles, Pa.
Rogerian Good
I read with interest your recent articles responding to Dr. Carl Rogers and his influence in the Christian world [“Carl Rogers’s Quiet Revolution,” Nov. 8]. I fear Dr. Roberts did not read Dr. Rogers’s book to have made such a statement as, to “become … Rogerian is to cut oneself off from a necessary condition for becoming a mature, complete person—that of being responsible to others.” So why is nearly the last third of the book On Becoming a Real Person devoted to relationships, family, educational, even national?
I have become a more mature wife, mother, and friend because of Rogerian therapy. I am grateful for the love or “empathy” I experience because Dr. Rogers shared his abilities. I believe every good gift is from God, and this has been good in my life.
CAROL DAUGHERTY
Fredonia, N.Y.
Thank you for the articles by William Kirk Kilpatrick and Robert C. Roberts. Their clear articulation of the Rogerian psychology and its antithesis of Christianity was timely and very profitable.
DR. H. HILDEBRAND
Caronport, Sask., Canada
I found the articles mean-spirited. I regretted that I had read them—rather like listening to gossip. In contrast, how magnanimous the spirit of Paul Tournier, who speaks warmly and with enthusiasm of the contributions of Freud, Jung, and others to the understanding of human psychology.
MARILYN KANICH
Munster, Ind.
CT has performed a great service in analyzing the seductive and devastating theses of Carl Rogers, the former President of the American Psychological Association.
JOHN A. HOWARD, President
The Rockford Institute
Rockford, Ill.
I was struck by Kilpatrick’s statement that “psychologists have never been able to keep their noses out of religion.” I agree, but I feel that the reverse is also true—that religion has never (at least lately) been able to keep its nose out of psychology.
This is not to say the church should keep her hands off healing broken minds and relationships, but we should recognize and label the difference between Christian faith and psychotherapy. They are not interchangeable. Mixing the two indiscriminately could be a subtle and deadly way to forget the central Christ who calls us not to mental wholeness, but to eternal life.
CARRIE L. CRAWFORD
Leetonia, Ohio
It is incomprehensible to me that Roberts’s article could have been written by a professor of philosophy, and even more so from such a prestigious institution as Wheaton. If I’m going to be forced to choose between “pagan empathy” or “Christian love,” I’ll take empathy every time. I’ve tasted both and there is really no contest.
DONALD U. LONGNECKER
Dunkirk, N.Y.
One spin-off of any self-fulfillment philosophy is the increasing refusal of its adherents to answer honest questions. Apparently “guilt-free” means no obligation to respond to your fellows, only to listen. No need to debate, just wait out your opponent like a smiling, tolerant Buddha.
WILLIAM SCHULER, M.D.
Mendota, Ill.
I don’t understand: on page 23 it is stated that Carl Rogers is 75. So he must have been born in 1910. Then the line under his picture shows him on his honeymoon in 1924. He looks to be more than 12 years old in the picture with his wife.
SHELBY J. LIGHT
Long Beach, Calif.
He was either an early bloomer—or born in 1902, which Who’s Who in America more accurately states.
—Eds.
Thirty Years Overdue?
Thank you for the splendid piece on “The Sexual Hazards of Pastoral Care” [Nov. 8]. As a 64-year-old Baptist General Conference former pastor and denominational youth executive, I am seeing some of my peers—only a few, not many, fortunately—fall by the way-side because of this problem. If only you had written this article 30 years ago, and they had read it, perhaps their troubles would not have happened.
GUNNER HOGLUND
Santa Clara, Calif.
A Precious Relationship Lost
“Three Women out of Four” by LaVonne Neff on widows in the church is accurate and timely [Nov. 8]. For the word “widow” you could substitute “divorcee”—for we, too, have grieved deeply the loss of life’s most precious relationship.
RUTH STERLING HOFFMAN
Durham, N.C.
I am a new widow—of a pastor. When a person of our church dies, the family calls the pastor. When the pastor dies, who does the pastor’s wife call? I could think of no one! I had to wait upon the Lord to see whom he would bring in my time of need. It’s rough being a widow.
MARGERY W. CHARLES
Gardner, Mass.
The idea of a widow’s support group in the church must be discussed and plans for it laid before there is one widow to be served. Yet there is a kindred group that is overlooked when the subject comes up: widowers, particularly those with small children. I know, because for six-and-one-half years I was there.
FRED MARKANT, JR.
Ramsey, N.J.
A Kantzer Home Run
Kantzer has hit a homer. His editorial “In Search of Heroes” [Nov. 8] has properly placed the bulk of the responsibility for the loss of integrity in American athletics, not upon the athletes themselves, but upon society as a permissive audience. After all, it was we who made Mary Lou Retton an expert on batteries.
KEVIN HALL
Blaine, Wash.
We have a problem in the athletic world because the attitudes of many Christian leaders discourage Christian young people from getting the proper education and training and entering the field of physical athletics. We must begin training Christian coaches in our colleges who understand physical education and athletics and who can integrate it with a Christian philosophy of education. If “athletes remain the principal role models of young Americans,” we cannot cut off from the Christian academic community the one field of study that can make an impact in this area.
I am one of only three physical education majors on the 55-man travel squad that played my senior season in the Orange Bowl. I am a Christian who believes there is something wrong in the educational system, and I am determined to do something about it and not leave the athletic field and the gym to the rule of Satan.
J. WALTER MILLET, JR.
West, Tex.
Kantzer has a historically inadequate view of sport in the “good old days” as well as an opposing selective perception of the “bad new days.” Has sport changed? Yes and no, but nowhere to the degree he suggests. Sport is a strange mixture of myth and reality, and the reality has a seamy side we would prefer not to notice. Perhaps the only change Kantzer has noted, but inadequately assessed, is that sport in 1985 is less an arena of idealized projection and fantasy within American society than it once was. Our selective memory has played tricks on us again.
JAMES MATHISEN
Wheaton College
Wheaton, Ill.
Redaction Criticism: A Helpful Discussion
Thank you for the CT Institute on redaction criticism [Oct. 18]. I felt the discussion was extremely helpful and balanced. These are issues with which evangelicals must wrestle, and I appreciate your time and energy in helping pastors and other leaders think this one through.
RICHARD J. FOSTER
Friends University
Wichita, Kan.
It concerns me that we have compassed the circle once more. Are the “scholars” again telling the lay Christian he cannot understand the Scriptures without their first digesting it? Are we, then, after two millennia, at terminus ad guem or terminus a quo? God help us have a sense of humor—or must someone redact this too?
JOHN GILLMARTIN
Alta Loma, Calif.
Thanks for including Bob Thomas’s clear, concise, and insightful comments. His view provided at least token balance in an otherwise unanimous approval of evangelical use of redaction criticism.
One is at a loss to understand why this redaction “baby,” conceived and nurtured by liberals, has been mutilated and then adopted by evangelicals. Why did Matthew, Mark, and John need to redact someone else’s material when they were eyewitnesses of the events whose memories were supernaturally activated by the Holy Spirit to recall “all” that Jesus said?
NORMAN L. GEISLER
Dallas Theological Seminary
Dallas, Tex.
Why not a layman’s opinion: How ridiculous can a group of professors get? As the saying goes, “The only reason for the giraffe being what it is, it must have been put together by a committee.” To me, redaction criticism has the same effect as giving a child a knife and telling him to see if he can find what is in his toy drum that makes it go “boom-boom-boom.”
VERNON HOLST
Newell, S.D.
At issue is “biblical inerrancy.” This doctrine necessitates that every line of Scripture have the same level of truth; none can be given any weight greater than any other. Redaction criticism, like form criticism before it, gave greater weight to “the earlier source,” if not directly at least by implication.
Redaction criticism leads to heresy from the fundamentalist, evangelical view. This kind of Christianity, like any authoritarian system, cannot stand heresies.
KENNETH H. BONNELL
Los Angeles, Calif.
Several years ago I “invented” the following definition: The Bible is an imperfect tool in the hands of God to lead us to The Perfect Solution. You see, no matter how perfect the Bible would be, if it did not have in it The Perfect Solution we would still be dead. It seems like a corporate effort, God watching over what really matters versus the writers displaying their own individuality. It makes sense to me.
H. D. SCHMIDT
Pleasant Hill, Calif.
More Babies To Adopt?
In the article “Where Have All the Babies Gone?” [Oct. 18], the premise seemed to be that infertile couples “need” a baby. We may feel that we need many things, including children, but are we willing to accept that infertility may be in God’s will for our lives in much the same way that some are called to be single?
As Christians we must examine our motives in the prolife movement. Do we really believe that abortion must be stopped because we believe in the sanctity of human life created by God, or do we hope that the Roe v. Wade decision will be reversed so there will be more babies to adopt?
JEAN STRATING
Gainesville, Fla.
In the article, Bill Pierce’s comparison of open adoption to open marriage is a blatant misrepresentation of the issue. Closed adoption has not adequately addressed the needs of many people. It has perpetuated unresolved grieving on the birth-parents’ part, and made it difficult for adoptees to be at peace with their adoptive identity when the circumstances surrounding the adoption are shrouded in secrecy and mystery. How much healthier to give the various parties in the adoption the option of openness.
RACHEL BUBLITZ
Christian Adoption and Family Services
Anaheim, Calif.
Evaluating Rock
I found your guilt-by-association article on Amy Grant most disturbing [Oct. 18]. What is this bit of editorializing doing in your “News” section? Who are the “many Christian listeners” who “reacted negatively” to Unguarded? Who defines what “hard-edged” rock is? Such a subjective issue as what constitutes “rock” is difficult to categorize and evaluate.
MICHAEL R. SAIA
Sunland, Calif.
Praise God for young women like Amy Grant. When Amy crossed over the charts, my girls were so excited to be able to tell their friends at public school that this great sound with the beautiful message was one of their favorite Christian artists, and no one could call it boring!
NANCY RODDY
Mt. Pleasant, Pa.
Growing Christian Smugness?
Thank you for the excellent editorial by Cornelius Plantinga [“The Justification of Rock Hudson,” Oct. 18]. His amazing way with words riveted me to my seat as I read, and then reread, the editorial. But most important, in relating this story current in our thinking, he also calls the current furor a nutrient for growing Christian smugness. Keep up the good work—and while you’re at it, have Dr. Plantinga write another editorial soon.
REV. GORDON L. LYLE
United Presbyterian Church
Follansbee, W. Va.
- Humor