Christian Living Archives - Page 19 of 55

May 30, 2021May 28, 2021

Memorial Day 2021 and What It Means

When I was a young man, Memorial Day was a big deal. There were parades, speeches, special services at many churches, and a town memorial. We were constantly reminded of the men and women who died to make it possible for us to live in freedom in the United States. In those days, in Bloomington, Indiana, where I grew up, many military veteran’s groups marched in the parade, and all the high school bands participated. After serving in the military, I found that Memorial Day had changed. It had become “the first weekend of summer.” There were no parades, and only a few veteran groups paid attention to the original purpose. What will Memorial Day 2021 be like?

Memorial Day began as “Decoration Day” in 1868, three years after the civil war ended. At Arlington National Cemetery. Flowers were put on all graves, and 5,000 people attended the ceremony. General Logan, who directed the ceremony, said, “Let no neglect, no ravages of time, testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic.”

Since that time, over 1.2 million Americans have died in our nation’s wars. In 1971, Memorial Day was declared a National Holiday by Congress. In 2000, Congress enacted The National Moment of Remembrance Act (P.L.106-579). Its charter says, “To encourage the people of the United States to give something back to their country … by encouraging and coordinating commemorations in the United States of Memorial Day and the National Moment of Remembrance.”

The National Moment of Remembrance Act suggests that at 3:00 PM local time on Memorial Day, “Everyone is to pause for a moment of silence to remember and honor those who have died in service to the nation … It is a way we can all help put the memorial back in Memorial Day.” We are in no way minimalizing the struggles for freedom and racial equity in America today, but even with our problems, how can we look at other nations and not be thankful for what we have?

On Memorial Day 2021, not understanding the sacrifices of the past has made us a selfish and self-serving people. Our ecological problems are because we want what is ours without thinking about the future. Our moral problems are because we have forgotten the teachings of Jesus Christ, which call us to live to serve others with integrity. In Luke 22:19-20, we read about Jesus instituting the Lord’s Supper as a way of helping us remember Him, what He taught, and the example He set. First Corinthians 11:28-30 warns Christians not to participate in communion without thought and understanding since “for this cause many are weak and sickly among you.”

What is true of the Church is true of America. We need a memorial to remind us of the important things. On Memorial Day 2021, let us not be so focused on our own agendas that we forget the past and what our predecessors have done to allow us to have what we enjoy today.

May 29, 2021May 28, 2021

The Problem of Pornography and the Church

In over 50 years of working with young people both in church situations and in my teaching in public schools, I have found one of the most destructive things in our culture is also one of the least talked about. It’s the problem of pornography.

Several years ago, our ministry produced a video series with Jimmy Hinton dealing with sexual predators. This series was personal for Jimmy because his father is in prison for sexual misconduct, even though he was a preacher for many years. It is an excellent series, but we have found that congregations don’t want to talk about this subject. When we send the DVD series and the teaching materials we provide with it, we usually have to mail it to an individual or business address rather than a church. The usual statement from church leaders or ministers is, “Well, we just don’t have that problem here.”

We have done many youth rallies and camp sessions and have participated in many church workshops. Over and over, teens have come to us to find answers to their personal struggles with porn and sexual abuse but wanting to remain anonymous. In several situations, I was forced to confront a youth leader or a minister about their use of pornography. In some cases, they were involved in a relationship that was in clear violation of God’sWord.

An organization known as LifePlan has released new data on the problem of pornography. Pornography use has skyrocketed, with one website reporting four-and-a-half billion hours of porn watched in one year. Seventy percent of Christian youth leaders have had a teenager come to them for help in dealing with pornography. Let us be clear that we are not talking about “dirty movies.” We are talking about movies that display sexual intercourse and perversions, including sex with animals. The STD rate among young adults (ages 15 to 24) in the United States is over 10 million a year.

I have learned by experience that giving a lesson on sexual behavior is a quick way to be reprimanded. People don’t want to hear teaching from the pulpit about why sex outside of marriage is not only wrong and sinful and destructive mentally and spiritually. “That’s the parent’s job” is the usual response. But parents aren’t doing it, and having the Church back up a parent who IS doing it should be the best of all worlds.

Don’t assume that this is someone else’s problem. We need to have frank discussions with kids. Youth leaders need to broach this subject with teens and their parents, and they need to know how to deal with their own struggles. Read Romans 1:24-32 and discuss it in detail with the young people you have access to. Pornography is a growing business in our world, and the problem of pornography isn’t going away. Neither is Satan going to stop bringing it into the minds of those who claim to be Christians.

May 24, 2021May 23, 2021

Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

A federal judge has ruled against a Christian college in Missouri, and the ruling may affect other Christian colleges and universities. It involves opening the women’s dorm rooms and showers to biological males. On his first day in office, President Biden issued an executive order prohibiting “discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation.” His order requires federal agencies to interpret the word “sex” to include sexual orientation and gender identity.

The Fair Housing Act is part of the Civil Rights Act of 1968. It prohibits discrimination in the sale or rental of housing based on race, religion, or national origin. In 1974 a provision was added banning discrimination based on sex, but it says nothing about sexual orientation and gender identity. With the new executive order, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is now enforcing the requirement based on “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” and applying it to dormitory housing at colleges and universities.

The College of the Ozarks is a Christian college near Branson, Missouri. In April 2021, the college sued the Biden administration, stating that the new executive order “requires private religious colleges to place biological males into female dormitories and to assign them as female’s roommates.” On moral and religious grounds, the school prohibits males students from female dorms and vice-versa. The federal judge ruled against the school.

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) plans to challenge the judge’s ruling. Ryan Bangert is vice president of legal strategy at ADF. He says that as it stands now, “If you have a male who identifies as a female, that student must be allowed to access female dormitories,” and that includes restrooms and showers. Failure to comply could result in fines that might force the school to close. That could be especially hard for College of the Ozarks, which does not charge tuition but depends on donations and requires all full-time students to work on campus.

Few Christian colleges could withstand hefty fines for violating the new rule, and dismissing a student because of sexual orientation and gender identity could create even more issues with the government. College of the Ozarks, like other colleges, is now working on housing plans for returning and new students in the fall. ADF said in a statement that “in this case the government is clearly overreaching.”

You can follow this on adflegal.org

May 16, 2021May 11, 2021

Refusing Vaccines is Not New

The current ignorance about vaccines is amazing. We see statements every day, frequently in religious publications, that are simply not true. There is nothing in a vaccine that could contain a microchip, for example. There is a fundamental distrust of the government and the scientific establishment that fuels ideas like this one. There are always hucksters who will seize upon this distrust and use it to try to make money. Refusing vaccines is not new.

In 1776 Edward Jenner noticed that milkmaids frequently had cowpox, which is a virus found in cows. The milkmaids didn’t get smallpox, which was killing 30% of the population at the time. Doctors tried various attempts to stop the epidemic, but Jenner’s treatment of giving people cowpox shots was the only one that worked. But many people were refusing vaccines for a variety of religious reasons.

In America in 1809, Massachusetts passed a mandatory vaccination law. In England in 1853, the government passed a U.K. Vaccination Act. It required parents to have infants vaccinated by three months, or the parents would be arrested. This precipitated the “Anti-Vaccination League of London,” and in 1879, the “Anti-Vaccination Society of America” was formed.

In America from 1920 through the 1970s, scientists developed vaccines for diphtheria, pertussis, polio, measles, mumps, and rubella. Some of those diseases, such as polio, were stopped in your author’s lifetime. I can remember iron lungs and classmates dying with polio and how we all celebrated when scientists produced the polio vaccine.

That all changed in 1982 when a documentary aired called “DPT: Vaccine Roulette.” It claimed that children had suffered brain damage from the diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus shot. It turned out that the cases used in the documentary were unrelated to the vaccines, but the media never reported that. Parents formed “The National Vaccine Information Center,” which is an organization to encourage refusing vaccines.

We must point out that there can be allergies or reactions to any drug. When I was a kid, doctors used sulfa-drugs to fight infections, and I had a severe reaction to one of those drugs. The drug was never removed from the market because I was a rare exception, and the drug benefited many others. My atheist parents did not attach any religious significance to my allergy but withheld further treatments. Some people are very allergic to peanuts, but I have not heard of an anti-peanut league.

In 1998, the National Vaccine Information Center secured a report from Andrew Wakefield, a gastroenterologist claiming that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine caused autism. Since I have a grandson who is autistic, I was very interested in that report. It turned out that Wakefield falsified data, and there was no connection. I took the time to check out the claim, but in 2000 Wakefield’s study reached the U.S. and was immediately seized upon by anti-vaccine groups as more evidence for refusing vaccines.

So why are we reporting on this in DoesGodExist.today? First, Christians are to serve others and do the best we can to promote well-being in all of those created in God’s image. That means we need to check out the stories and make sure the data supports what people are saying. We can not trust the news media, and TV programs promote hoaxes of all kinds, from Bigfoot to UFOs to miracle health substances.

Secondly, Christians should embrace anything that relieves suffering and avoids the pain of disease. Jesus had naysayers in His day. He would cure someone by a miracle, and His opponents would try to explain it away rather than admit He was God’s Son. Don’t blindly embrace the claims of anyone, but check out the facts. Vaccines are not made from aborted babies, and they do not contain fetal cells. Vaccines save thousands of lives, even though occasionally someone will have an adverse reaction to them.

Science and the Bible are friends, not enemies. The only reason vaccines work is because of God’s design of our bodies. “I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are your works, and that my soul knows completely” (Psalms 139:14).

Data from Science News, May 8, 2021, pages 32-34.

May 5, 2021May 4, 2021

No Room for Arrogance in Christianity

When I was an atheist, one thing that always turned me off was the seeming arrogance of religious people I knew. The “better than thou” attitude is not only unwarranted, but it is unscriptural. The Bible gives us no room for arrogance.

The classic biblical rebuttal of the attitude of arrogance is the parable Jesus taught in Luke 18:9-14. This parable was about a “religious” guy who did everything right religiously and a tax collector who was a Jew who betrayed his fellow Jews by working for the Roman government.

The Pharisee did everything right and told God about it. His opening line was, “I thank you that I am not like other men.” Then he went on to talk about all the good things he did. The tax collector looked down at the ground and “smote his breast,” which was a symbol of sorrow in that culture. Then he begged God for forgiveness. Luke tells us that Jesus “spoke this parable to those who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others” (Luke 18:9).

Jesus and the apostles hit this theme over and over. In Luke 7:37-50, we see Christ contrasting the woman who was a sinner with the Pharisee, a part of the religious elite. Jesus praised her and held her actions up as exemplary while he condemned the Pharisee. In Romans 2:17-24, Paul addresses the hypocrisy of religious people who claim to be knowledgeable but don’t practice what they preach. In Matthew 5:14-16, Christ holds up His followers as people who are “the light of the world” for how they live.

It took me a long time as an atheist to realize the fact that “sitting in the chicken coup doesn’t make you a chicken.” Sitting in the Church building doesn’t make you a Christian. The assembly of Christians is not a venue to be entertained but a hospital for people seeking to be what God called them to be. If you are reading this and have been turned off by the arrogance and self-righteousness of people who claim to be Christians, please understand that those folks turned off Jesus Christ as well.

Philippians 2:5-8 reminds us that Christ “humbled himself by becoming obedient even to the point of death, even death on the cross.” How can any of us be very self-righteous or arrogant when we think about that statement. There is no room for arrogance in Christianity.

May 4, 2021April 21, 2021

Happiness Comes from Following Christ’s Teaching

Robert Ingersoll is an atheist hero because he traveled the country attacking God, Christianity, and the Bible in the nineteenth century. Ingersoll is quoted as saying, “The time to be happy is now, the place to be happy is here, the way to be happy is to make other people happy.” That statement is remarkably similar to the writings of the Apostle Paul in Philippians 4:10-13 and the words of Christ in John 16:22-24. Happiness comes from following Christ’s teaching.

Every attempt by atheists to provide an alternative to the teachings of Christ has ended up in frustration and pain. When an atheist built a town in Missouri with the name “Liberal,” it collapsed in a short time, with the founder saying he never again wanted to live in a town with no churches. Governments based on atheism in the past and today have not been successful in providing peace and prosperity for their citizens.

It is easy to attack Christianity while enjoying the blessings of Christ’s teachings. Offering a useful and positive alternative to what Jesus taught is another matter. As the United States drifts away from its Christian roots and embraces humanism, secularism, and atheism, we see an increase in suicides, shootings, racism, and abuse. Happiness comes from following Christ’s teaching.

When someone is incarcerated, the prison usually asks their religious beliefs for the record. Very few prisoners say “atheist,” “agnostic,” or “none.” In our prison work, we ask prisoners taking our correspondence courses to explain how they got to the point of being jailed. Merle Haggard wrote a song in which he said: “In spite of all my Sunday learning, to the wrong I kept on turning. No one could steer me right, but mother tried.” Haggard’s mother was a member of the Church of Christ, and his prison stint took place because he rejected the teachings he learned as a child. We hear that line over and over from many of our students in prison.

My father was an atheist, but he was a very moral man. I asked him one time why he was faithful to my mother. His response was, “I guess it is because of the way I was raised.” His father was a minister, and his mother was a strong Christian woman. Jesus said, “By their fruit you shall know them (Matthew 7:16). Atheism has no positive fruit in the long run. Happiness comes from following Christ’s teaching. Robert Ingersoll found a receptive audience only when he repeated the teachings of the Bible.

Inspiration for this came from Faulkner University spring bulletin 2021.

April 29, 2021April 21, 2021

Near-Death Experiences and God

The April 16, 2021, issue of The Week magazine (pages 48-49) carried an article about the research of Bruce Greyson, a professor emeritus in psychiatry at the University of Virginia. Dr. Greyson has been collecting hundreds of records of people who have had near-death experiences (NDEs). In 1975, psychiatrist Raymond Moody wrote a best-selling book titled Life After Life. Dr. Greyson has a new book similar to Moody’s simply titled After. It contains a series of case studies of people who have had NDEs.

The article discusses possible explanations of the near-death experiences people have had in terms of brain responses to stress. But the Greyson studies go beyond just trying to find a physical explanation for what people experience. One interesting fact is that people who have had NDEs are changed by the experience. Greyson says that a near-death experience “dramatically transforms people’s attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviors.” People lose their fear of dying, they lose their fear of life, and they see a purpose in life they hadn’t seen before.

Greyson says, “I’ve spoken to people who were policemen or career military officers who couldn’t go back to their jobs, couldn’t stand the idea of violence. The idea of hurting someone becomes abhorrent to them. They end up going into helpful professions. They become teachers, or health care workers, or social workers.”

Dr. Greyson ends his article by saying that he grew up without any spiritual background, and he still is not sure of what “spiritual” means. He says that researching near-death experiences for 40 or 50 years convinced him that there is more to life than just our physical bodies. He says he now recognizes that there is a nonphysical part of us, but he is not sure what it is.

Our society has tried to portray humans as just animals. The research that honest seekers like Greyson are doing gives strong support to the fact that what defines us is our soul–that part of us created in the image of God.

April 23, 2021April 23, 2021

God Positioning System and What it Means

The Spring 2021 issue of God and Nature published an article by Angie Cornwell about the “God Positioning System.” During World War I, a homing pigeon saved the lives of almost 200 American men by carrying a message 25 miles despite being bombarded with gunfire. People have used homing pigeons for thousands of years to carry messages in all kinds of terrain, all kinds of weather, and in unfamiliar territory. Studies of how homing pigeons do this have concluded that they use at least five different systems. If one method doesn’t work, they use a different one. One technique is visual, using familiar landmarks. A second involves the use of environmental odors. A third system consists of using Earth’s magnetic field. A fourth system uses infrasonic (low frequency) signals, and a fifth system uses information stored in the pigeon’s brain.

Humans have a difficult time learning how to navigate in unfamiliar environments. For most of my life, I have relied on maps, but they are hard to use. You have to know where you are on the map, and folds in the map can cause misinformation. The invention of the global positioning system (GPS) has eliminated the weaknesses of maps. When in our human arrogance, we think we have a better way than the GPS has advised, causing us to get lost, the GPS will jump back in and guide us back to where we wanted to go.

Christians have a special GPS which Angie Cornwell has called the God positioning system. There are many similarities to the global position system. The God positioning system finds us wherever we are in life and directs us to where we need to go. When our arrogance causes us to choose a destructive path, we can turn back to the God positioning system to find our way.

God, in His mercy, has given us the ultimate navigational system to find our way back to Him. He has given us His Word to follow and His Holy Spirit to guide us. The global positioning system uses three satellites to triangulate our position. God the Father, Jesus Christ, His Son, and the Holy Spirit can pinpoint our spiritual condition and navigate us toward our eternal home. We never have to be desperately lost or alone. We don’t have to struggle to figure out where we are and how to get where we need to be.

Science hasn’t completely figured out all of the things that allow homing pigeons to navigate, and our human wisdom does not allow us to comprehend how the God positioning system works. The good news is that we don’t have to understand either one to take advantage of all they do for us.

Reference: “God Positioning System (GPS)” from God and Nature Spring 2021.

April 18, 2021April 16, 2021

The Right to Worship

An interesting battle is going on in the Indiana state legislature, which could affect the rest of the country. Senate Bill 263 would make it illegal to restrict the right to worship even during pandemics or natural disasters. The statement made by those promoting the bill is, “The right to worship is guaranteed by the United States and Indiana constitutions, and no one has the right to infringe on that right.”

This is a complex issue. Telling people they can’t assemble because they might get sick or make someone else ill puts the government in the position of deciding who can worship and who cannot. Which is more important, having the right to worship anywhere, anytime, and in any way you wish or having authorities decide when and where to allow worship? The potential for abuse is very high either way.

We suggest that carefully following the biblical teachings and examples would solve this issue. The first-century Church did not own buildings and worshipped in small groups in private homes. Jesus said, “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20). The need for large groups with elaborate services and many participants is a product of church entertainment, not the worship of God.

No one can take away our right to worship if our worship is doing what the Bible encourages us to do and following the example of the first century Church. There are interesting legal questions in this discussion, but the right to worship is not threatened no matter what the legislature decides.

Reference: Tribune Content Agency for 4/9/21 page A2 in the South Bend Tribune.

April 16, 2021April 15, 2021

Good Joke with a Bad Message

There is an old joke about a man who wanted to take his valuables to heaven with him. He bound them carefully in a package and told his wife he was placing them in the attic right above his bed. He planned to die in bed, and as his spirit soared upward, he was going to pick up the package and take it to heaven with him. The old man did die in bed as he had planned. Sometime later, his wife remembered that he had this plan to pick up his valuables, so she went upstairs into the attic to see if he had been successful. The package was still there right where he had put it. Confronted with this, his oldest son remarked, “Well what he should have done was to place it in the cellar.” Good joke with a bad message.

This is a bad message because it conveys a wrong idea about life after this life. The Bible talks about streets of gold and gates of pearls to get us to understand that being with God brings beauty and rewards beyond what any of us can imagine. It does not mean that we will be in a physical city with real gold used to build its streets. Quite frankly, that would be interesting for just a few hours at the most. Heaven is a timeless existence free of all of the pain and problems of this life. Our feeble minds can’t comprehend the beauty and the joy of heaven.

As I get older, I’m looking forward to not having any more tears, any more death of those I care about, any more sorrow, or any more pain. The promise of Revelation 21:4 means more and more as I experience bad things here on Earth. It’s a good joke with a bad message because it has a wrong understanding of heaven. We need to be reminded that not only is heaven better than anything we can imagine, but hell not a dark place with flaming sulfur (brimstone). Hell is separation from God and all the spiritual blessings of God. However, the fundamental point of the joke remains: “You can’t take it with you.”