Personal Thoughts

I have been unusually contemplative the last few days. This is not to say I have been despondent but more reflective, more aware of the feelings some of the people I have come to care about are feeling while I ramble on spewing my theological opinion. Some of the things God has had to do, told in the stories in the Old Testament, like killing Egyptian innocence and calling it love [Isaiah 43:2, 4] as well as what He has allowed to happen, like natural disasters and man’s cruelty to man, make Him appear distant, uncaring, and if not this, to suggest Him—well—draconian, when He doesn’t get His way.

I feel I have been left to explain Him or somehow spin His actions—or lack of action—in some merciful way—something I never imagined would be a part of ministry. Recently in a Bible study, I thought it an exciting idea to review the 7 sacrifices Moses wrote about. These speak of Christ and His death for our salvation. I forgot that someone whom I care very much about, and who was in this study, owns a farm on which they are raising some of the world’s most lovable little lambs. And here I am talking about butchering them!”

“Happy is anyone who takes no offense in me,” Jesus spoke caringly [Luke 7:23]. One translation [NLT] put the onus on us! “God blesses those who do not turn away because of [Jesus].” (And then the translator seemed to reconsider in a footnote, “Or who are not offended by me“). Even Jesus, at times, needed to explain Himself and at times the explanation was worse. “I am the bread of life,” Jesus argued with Jewish leaders who sought to entrap Him in His words. They were discussing “manna.” And then the Savior raised His voice and cried, “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life in yourselves” [John 6:53]. That’s where He lost them. John 6:66 is one of the saddest scriptures: “From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.” I have come to cherish Peter’s response to all of this when the Savior asked him if he, too, would leave, “Lord, to whom will we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Spot on, my brother!

I suppose at times God seemed cognitively dissonant. He instructed Hosea to marry a prostitute [Hosea 1:2] which represented in His mind Israel’s unfaithfulness. God was hurting—even if we can’t see it! (Marrying a prostitute was forbidden to the priests, Leviticus 21:7. According to Deuteronomy 22:21 virginity at marriage was sacrosanct.)

Many maintain, as the song goes, “We’ll talk it over in the bye and bye. I’ll ask the reasons; He’ll tell me why.” There is some truth here, but more immediately it helps to understand that mercy must be administered by a judge, The Judge, and our limited understanding of His rulings, His form of justice, is what probably bothers us most. Yet, Abraham seemed to know, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?“[Genesis 18:25]

Amen, Brother, Amen.

[Written in loving concern with empathy and understanding]

With the current interest in redefining identities, the Christian Church is in the process of reevaluating relevant Scriptures. Binary identification, gender dysphoria and gender reassignment, gender affirming care for children, non-binary persons, shared pronouns, and misgendering are among the increasing list of labels by which some self-identify. (This explains the complexity that might introduce a gender studies course in college.)

The importance of “manhood” and consequently “fatherhood” within a changing culture is being marginalized and even discredited. Factions within the industrialized nations are pushing the narrative that men must become less virile and more feminine, more woke. Professor Tom Klingenstein, Chairman of the Clarmont Institute, addressing the need for strong national leadership (in a speech on what he called, “the war to preserve the American way of life”) opined,

“In present time when manhood is being stripped of its masculinity, traditional manhood even when flawed is absolutely essential.” 

Acculturation

How is it even possible to imagine that a kinder-gardener should be credited with knowing anything about their own sexuality! The effort to include younger children, as the ‘misnamed’ gender affirming care seeks to do, is an effort through acculturation to introduce a way of life in the same manner the Sawi tribes of Indonesia trained their young children to eat human flesh. What should be a cringe-worthy approach to life becomes the social norm because—if children are anything—children are, to use Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s term, malleable. Children are being asked to understand an adult theme that has no relevance in their play world but, nonetheless, does have life changing consequences!

Family

Men have lost their status as father and husband in any Biblical or Edenic sense and the family has been—not extended—but altered to exclude them. In the name of diversity, identity, and equity [die] masculinity has been disenfranchised and that’s tragic! Fathers have lost their identity as caregivers and protectors of the family unit.

What makes a man, a man? We have lost any intuitive understanding of the word—a fact made more evident by talks of gender fluidity or reassignment. We always understood, culturally, that boys grow into men and fathers were a vital part of that process [Proverbs 1:8]. But a society that condemns virility, that accuses loving husbands of rape, that empowers wives in the name of equity to redefine the dynamics of the marriage relationship, or that marginalizes a husband’s manliness, is a society that has lost the Biblical concept of family and its cultural importance. We have assuredly exited Eden in a most literal sense and cannot find our way back.

Fatherhood

Fatherhood culturally always stood in the way of reinventing society. There was always something about a father’s creative genius, his passion for family, his strength—not just physically but his strength—of character that made him into a frightening opponent to any who failed to discern the love in his motives. Men are by nature revolutionaries where their families are concerned. It was important for social change to occur that fathers be defanged, domesticated, and made amenable to such change. Their determination to lead where their children were concerned became culturally and legally challengeable.

Enter the idea of equity which rips and tears at a long standing cultural recognition of the role of fatherhood in society. Diversity became an acceptable word for marginalizing a father’s cultural supremacy within the family. One has to ask rhetorically: Why the attempt at eroding the distinction traditionally awarded “mother and father,” “man and woman” by inventing generic terms that can serve to narrate the story of culture without any reference to either?

Social Change?

You are familiar with the acronym LGBTQIA+. Each stage of its development legally and culturally saw Hollywood introducing more and more social change in movie format. The ‘plus’ sign opens the door wide for any other words necessary to give language to such cultural change.

The Divine Model

We have seen fathers wimp out while mothers assume roles they were not psychological suited to. The fatherly task of teaching self-discipline, for one, became less and less evident even in a household were he was still in residence. But having a dad to learn discipline and the practical wisdom it engenders was, and continues to be, the divine model:

I will be his father, and he will be my son. If he sins, I will correct and discipline him with the rod, like any father would do. – 2 Samuel 7:14

One father alone might seem insignificant in addressing crime but a culture that endorses and encourages “fatherhood” will deal with it decisively.

God, Give Us Back Fathers

Fathers were always a vital part of a Bible based social structure. It became  important in a woke world to reinterpret Scripture in a way that spins this golden truth into worthless straw. [Homosexuality, for example, in the Bible is being interpreted as only an antiquated pagan religious practice not in any way akin to the present day dissolution of the nuclear family unit.] But the important truth being ignored here  is the Biblical role of fatherhood in the children’s lives. If we can bring this to the forefront culturally, I maintain, we can cauterize this slow bleeding which is draining the very spiritual and psychological life out of our world.

I will be his father, and he will be my son. I will never take my love away from him, 1 Chronicles 17:13

God, give us back our men, our fathers!

From every ethnicity, clan, and tribe to the nations of the world the cultures of the globe and the languages used to express them are intrinsic aspects of each group’s identity. To westernize these societies so they resemble mainline Christianity is to ask them to leave the community in which they knew a sense of belonging and acceptance to become marginalized and an outcast for nothing more than some misunderstood privilege of learning how to act “civilized,” to act British or like an American! As Andrew Walls remarked in The Missionary Movement in Christian History,

“This question is alive for Africans just as it was for Greek converts in the ancient Hellenistic world. Do we have to reject our entire history and culture when we become Christians?”

We are reminded of Acts 15 and that first Council at Jerusalem.

“For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements:…” [vs. 28].

And the Church leaders then expressed a concern about any former religious ritual which had a non-christian meaning and would confuse any believer who hungered for God’s Truth in its place. Philip Jenkins, however, reminds us in The Next Christendom,

“That is not to say that there is no such thing as an unchanging “historic Christian faith,” but we must be careful to distinguish the core idea from the incidentals.”

To experience a sense of accomplishment in winning souls—as well as a sense that the pagan element has been successfully purged—missionary effort once confused westernization with evangelization. Yet it is well understood that the gospel message must transcend culture. Wearing a military uniform does not make one a soldier nor wearing a doctor’s scrubs does it make one a surgeon. Likewise teaching a non-christian culture to practice the rituals of the Western church does not make them Christian.

But what if pagan social practices come in conflict with the Christian faith. Should the indigenous pastor, for instance, be concerned about polygamy or nudity or the circumcision of girls—to name a few—when they encounter these? In the western world or, the so-called “Global North” castration and mastectomies of children (early teens), are becoming normal practices along with the enculturation^# of transgenderism. Should Christians in an effort to evangelize be concerned?

Is the purity of the Christian message being adulterated with ideas that “cut” its efficacy? Is the light of the Church’s witness flickering and might it go out? Is the new convert’s ability to live a pure faith in Christ being challenged by such cultural norms? The Western church once defined what a Christian culture looked like because in most cases Christianity became the “state religion.” But now Western religion has to join the Global South in addressing culturally defined practices which, at the very least, stand to shock the sensibilities of the believer unprepared to deal with them.

But Christianity is more about a Christ-like character first and the expression of those qualities that represent it.  Christianity is more about the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount than culture.

The “Beauty” of the Beatitudes is that they are the “core ideas” which have nothing to do with cultural norms but the quality of a pure Christianity, the Christian character that represents Christ to the world.

Any custom that confronts these inner qualities is immediately challenged by the heart and the convictions of the Believer who lives them. No tradition, observation, fashion, ritual or ceremony, religious or codified in secular law, formal or informal—whatever—will be ultimately accepted by the believer who is becoming a new person in Christ and who is guided by the conviction of the Spirit of God.

We “old” folk tend to put too much importance in a hymn book or organ—and I really do! But there is no ritual defined in Scripture in the life of the early church. It is as if I can still hear Paul caution us, “But if any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God” [1 Corinthians 11:16].

But we have the Sermon on the Mount and it is to be lived. The Beatitudes give us our Christian identity!

A metaphor is a thing regarded as representative or symbolic of something thought unrelated, a comparison between two ideas as if these were synonyms, We use them in sharing the Gospel:

“That was the true Light, which lights every man that comes into the world” [John 1:9].

Paul did not call Jesus our redeemer but our redemption [1 Corinthians 1:30] . He was the ransom price to free us from sin? But will these metaphorical or picturesque representations of our Lord’s crucifixion be misunderstood as gibberish among a peoples or tribal culture, for whom the words, themselves, have no immediate significance?

When Jesus declared, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” [John 6:53]  John witnessed “On hearing it, many … said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”

“Western interpretations of the atonement,“ Philip Jenkins wrote in The Next Christendom, “ …can be traced to the writings of Saint Anselm around 1100. For Anselm, human sins were like grievous offenses committed against a great Lord, debts that required a ransom or restitution of great price, which, in Christianity took the form of the death of God’s Son. … The biblical Lord became a feudal lord” [Page 7].

Eastern Orthodoxy saw this interpretation for Jesus’ crucifixion as “overly legalistic.” To this we add that the word “atonement” itself was  brought into English by William Tyndall centuries later. The concept of “debt” was replaced by John Calvin and the Reformation with talk of criminality, punishment, and God’s wrath.

Religious training has given us a degree of comfort with the Biblical system of sacri- fices as representative (a type of) Jesus’ death, but to what extent should we consider this metaphor as explicatory in other cultures? How useful is it in a given cultural setting to evangelize a people?

• “Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world” [John 1:29].
• “[Jesus], after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God” [Hebrews 10:12].

Catholic missionary, Vincent Donovan, asked in “Christianity Rediscovered” [page 21] “Just what was the essential message of Christianity?” He explained, “With Africans the purpose of words is not to establish logical truth, but to set up social relationships” [Page 22]. He went on to assert that “their culture is all encompassing and all important” [Page 23].

Philip Jenkins in his work, “The Next Christendom” said, which I take as a caution against confusing, diluting, or otherwise compromising the message of our Lord’s Crucifixion,

“Gradually Catholic clergy (as missionaries to Latin American in the 1700’s) succeeded in adapting the liturgy and sacraments to the native worldview and its customs, in a highly successful act of enculturation“ [Page 38].

Enculturation! Catholicism endeavored to inculcate the moral and spiritual message of the Cross as part of the cultural identity of Latin Americans but may have only succeeded in providing a modified religious ritual acceptable to both the Aztecs and Rome. How real was Calvary’s impact on their “faith”?

And how much should this truth impact the very culture it transcends? Don Richardson presented Christ to the Sawi people of the Netherland New Guinea [now: part of Indonesia] God’s “peace child” after their use of the term within their culture.

So how do we introduced to them salvation, grace, holiness, God’s love, in order that they might make these representative of their lifestyle and, in turn, promote the message without losing its emphasis, its inspiration, the “power of the Gospel”? After all, this is, indeed, the task before us!

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Africans, Indians, Nepalese, Indonesians, Argentinians, … Romans 1:16.

 

Today is Stephen Meyer’s birthday! When he was fourteen he started questioning the meaning of life’s achievements and trophies when death ultimately concludes all will be forgotten. His worrying—he called it— became eventually “a fear of a fear of a fear.” At fourteen, he concluded his life was over.

But enter the writings of the French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, who concluded “No finite point has any meaning unless it has an infinite reference point.” What is the value of this life unless there is a transcendent personal God? One good thing became apparent to Meyer: he was not going insane; he was becoming a philosopher.

Eventually he learned that many in his generation were thinking the same thing because they, too, were being informed by the most educated and respected minds that God didn’t exist. The most popular and brilliant scientific minds concluded a materialistic interpretation of reality in which God was not needed to bring anything into existence. They pushed this metaphysical worldview in the educational system. The philosophy of the day became existentialism: that every person is alone responsible for the course of their own life. There is no eternal plan, for, there is no God.

It gets worse: the empiricist, David Hume, then argued, that the laws of nature depend on inductive reasoning (we learn any natural law by repeatedly observing the same result for a given controlled condition or cause). “But how dependable is our perception of things? ” Intelligent minds wanted to know. Darwin, himself, in later years, confided in a friend,

“With me the horrible doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”

Maybe we all have “Boltzmann brains”. The theory says that at the time the universe was coming into existence there might have been a small fluctuation in the wave function from which the universe came [ψ] leading some of our brains to become Boltzmann brains instead of natural brains, in which our memories and perceptions were no longer reliable. [no joke!]

“I remember,” Meyer recalled, “looking at a windowsill in my bedroom and wondering if the impression of it in my mind accurately represented the actual object in the world.” It was inevitable that such a philosophy would come to question knowledge itself. “How do I know that my perceptions of reality are accurate?” he worried.

After teaching him to recognize an orange along with other fruit, I recall teaching our three year old son his colors. Pointing to the color “yellow” I asked “what color is this?” He responded cleverly, “Orange!” You see, oranges are naturally yellow in color; so, he was correct but we had some relearning to schedule.

Viktor Frankl, who, little doubt, amassed profound wisdom from his experience in a German concentration camp, and who, consequently, wrote his classic work, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” reminded us that such questions are okay to ask.

The real truth here is that we need God in our lives to get the answers.

Hebrews 11:6 [ESV] “Whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”

We give up a lot when we give up a faith in God!

This is not a subject that interests everyone, but a few might find an encouragement to faith by reading Stephen C. Meyer’s “The Return of the God Hypothesis.” Meyer reviews some of the latest scientific discoveries in a number of fields, including, mathematics, astronomy, astro physics, physics, cosmology, and genetics, that challenge the supposition that the universe and then life came by chance rather than by design. Mathematician and philosopher William Dembski established a rigorous method for detecting intelligence: first what has come into existence must be calculated as extremely improbable by the laws of probability and, secondly, once it does exist it must serve a specific function. An example would be the creation of carbon-based protein out of hydrogen and helium, the basic building blocks of the universe. Carbon-based compounds, thus formed, are the basis of all life.

Cambridge theoretical physicist, Sir John Polkinghorne, came up with the “Universe-Generating Machine” to illustrate the fine-tuning of the universe which supports the theory that the universe was “designed” and not coming into existence by chance. He asked his students to imagine in your space travels coming across a universe generating machine with a eleven different dials and sliders and knobs all set to default values which if any of them where moved one click up or down would produce “catastrophic results.”^* Would it be unreasonable to argue that the machine was the creation of some “designer” and if we are talking about our universe, God?

Life on earth is carbon-based but how was carbon formed out of hydrogen? “The question of how carbon acquired its precise, favorable resonance turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg” says Professor Meyer. The formation of carbon depended on four fundamental forces:

1. The strong nuclear force which holds protons and neutrons together
2. The electromagnetic force that causes opposite magnetic poles (protons vs electrons) within the atom to repel.
3. The mass of an Up Quark produces a positive charge in the neutron and proton of an atom.
4. The mass of a Down Quark produces a negative charge in the neutron and proton of an atom.

The difference in masses between quarks in an atom cannot exceed one mega-electron volt—this is the equivalent charge of .0001 percent of the charge of the largest known quark—without producing an all proton or neutron universe where life could not exist. “Much more striking,” Meyer informs our faith, “the masses of “up quarks” and “down quarks,” the constituent parts of protons and neutrons, must have precise values to allow for the production of the elements, including carbon, essential for a life friendly universe.”

Meyer went on to say that,

If the Gravitational force strength were weaker, stars wouldn’t get hot enough for nuclei to combine to form carbon. A slightly lower value for the gravitational force constant would prevent the development of thermal layering inside stars. Such layering is necessary for producing so many different types of elements including carbon and oxygen, needed for life,

If the gravitational force were too strong, the temperature inside stars would get too hot and nuclear synthesis would produce only elements heavier than carbon and oxygen.

The strength of the strong nuclear and electromagnetic forces, the ratio between the fundamental forces, the exact kinetic energy of beryllium and helium (the two elements forms from helium which in turn unite to form carbon and oxygen), and thus the strength of gravitational forces inside stars as well as the excitation energy of carbon all had to be exquisitely tuned and coordinated within very narrow tolerances to promote the synthesis of large amounts of carbon inside stars. Yet without carbon life would be impossible.

^* The Universe-Generating Machine
1. Strong Nuclear Force – holds protons and neutrons together
2. Mass of Up Quark – positive charge in the neutron and proton
3. Mass of Down Quark – negative charge in the neutron and proton
4. Electron Mass – https://reasons.org/explore/publications/articles/testing-creation-using-the-proton-to-electron-mass-ratio
5. Initial Entropy of the Universe – How much energy would have been wasted in the creation of the universe. A maximum entropy would be a black hole that would swallow up everything.
6. Ratio of Strong Nuclear Force to Electro-magnetic Force – The SNF holds the atom together while the magnetic force pulls it apart because the positively charged nucleus repels the negatively charged electrons orbiting that nucleus.
7. The Mass of Neutrinos – a subatomic particle that is very similar to an electron, but has no electrical charge and a very small mass.
8. Gravitational (G) Force Constant – which Is needed to measure the true ‘G’ force exerted on a body. All stars and planets maintain orbits and distances based on this constant.
9. Expansion Rate of the Universe – Special relativity or the acceleration of heavenly bodies moving away from each other and the earth. This speed cannot be too fast or slow when the universe was created. Too fast, and stars, planets and moons would never be formed; too slow and the gravitational forces would cause the universe to collapse in on itself.
10. Cosmological Constant – a repulsive force required to keep the Universe in static equilibrium. Physicists are agreed that this constant is “fine-tuned” within 1 part in 10⁹⁰.
11. Electro-magnetic Force Constant – that holds electrons within the atom orbiting that atom.

We were watching Star Trek, The Next Generation, Season 6, Episode 9, “The Quality of Life” in which Data asked Beverly Crusher, the doctor, “How do we know something is alive?” He was referring to a small AI machine that was created to perform certain tasks. This “robot” was capable of “learning.” Data is, himself, an android—a fact that gives context to his question.

How do we define life? Data, on Star Trek, thought it had to do with the ability to learn and adjust to one’s surroundings or the ability to grow. Maybe, it is more about the ability to reproduce. All living things can do that.

Live beings, “think” according to Descartes. “Cogito ergo sum.” [I think, therefore, I am.] All living organisms have brains? But what about plants? Such questions, however, are generally ignored by those of us who have a life to live, but perhaps, we should take a moment out to “think about it.”[no pun intended].

Sherlock Holme’s Professor Moriarty, in episode 12, claims to be alive (even though he was a hologram). He claimed self-awareness. “I have consciousness!” he argued. Pickard, captain of the Enterprise, realizing Moriarty’s imagined sentience was dangerous, created for him a universe within the hologram that he thought was the real world. Pickard now could pilot his ship in his reality while Moriarty and his woman friend took a shuttle craft merrily though the darkness in theirs. “Who knows.” Pickard mused, “Our reality may be very much like theirs and all this [pointing to his ship] might just be an elaborate simulation running inside a little device sitting on someone’s table.”

The newest definition of life is that all living things have a genetic code. If this “genetic code” is considered in simplest terms a protein mix, chemicals, that somehow program us to function as humans, we might someday synthesize these proteins and, thereby, replicate that organic soup in which life allegedly began?

“But cells are not simple plasmic units of chemical reactions.” affirmed Stephen Meyer in “Signature in the Cell” (New York:Harper Collins Publishers. 2009), Chapter 9. “Cells are complex living units with at least 250 functioning protein clusters,” Meyer said. The organic soup has a cook!?

America is waiting on the latest Power Ball numbers to win 1.2 billion (with a ‘B’) dollars. The odds of claiming the jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million. We understand that there is a 1 in 1,222,000 chance of death or injury from lightning in a given year; a 1 in 57,825 chance of dying from a hornet, wasp, or bee sting during your lifetime. Google it.

But

“The probability of producing the proteins necessary to build a minimally complex cell—or the genetic information necessary to produce those proteins—by chance,” Meyers calculated, “is unimaginably small.” His abacus ran out of colored beads. “That’s a ‘1’ followed by 41,000 zeros!” he wrote.

Has humankind evolved from monkeys or are we “made in the image of God”? The “monkey” theory reduces hope to nothing more than a religious placebo rather than actually talking to the God Who gives hope!. When there is no real reason for our life in relation to an eternal God, we can only dream within the limitations of this life in which death is inevitable; we are reliant on no one but ourselves, and life is invested in an evolutionary process that will “hopefully” bring in a utopia for our progeny.

For you are my hope, Lord GOD, my confidence from my youth. – Psalm 71:5 [CSB]

Not to believe in God? It makes more sense to play the lottery.

“The Greeks had a word for the feeling one has when one is happy: makarios. It is a feeling of contentment, when one knows one’s place in the world and is satisfied with that place. If your life has been fortunate, you should feel makarios. We use idioms in English to try to approximate this experience. We’ll say, “My life has really come together,”” … “In Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that if you are a peacemaker, then you are makarios. Since English doesn’t have a word for this feeling, translators have struggled to find one. What do you call it when you feel happy, content, balanced, harmonious and fortunate? Well, translators have concluded, you are blessed. Thus our English translations say, “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Mt 5: 9). Unfortunately, this introduces another problem. The English language prefers clear subjects for its verbs. So the missing puzzle piece in the Beatitudes is, How is one blessed? What goes without saying in our culture is that God blesses people. Consequently, we often interpret this verse to mean, “If you are a peacemaker, then God will bless you.” But this isn’t what Jesus meant. Jesus meant, “If you are a peacemaker, then you are in your happy place.” It just doesn’t work well in English. Alas, here is the bigger problem: maybe the reason we North Americans struggle to find makarios in our personal lives is because we don’t have a word in our native language to denote it.” [Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible by E. Randolph Richards, Brandon J. O’Brien]

This reminds me of Abram Maslow’s peak-experience of the self-actualized person.

1. A comfortable acceptance of life [Deuteronomy 29:29]
2. Acceptance of others (unprejudiced) [Zechariah 8:17; Galatians 6:2]
3. A love for nature. [Genesis 2:15; 1 Corinthians 12:22]
4. Single-minded, non hypocritical, natural and spontaneous [Romans 12:9; 2 Timothy 1:5; 1 Corinthians 5:8; 2 Corinthians 2:17]
5. People are not problems; people have problems [Ephesians 4:28; 2 Corinthians 12:21]
6. Increased desire for privacy to meditate, dream, “pray,” create [Psalm 1:1; 91:1]
7. Environment independent: can work, live, enjoy life anywhere in any cultural setting. Socially independent. [Philippians 4:11]
8. Fresh emotional responses to life, deep feelings, especially of joy. [John 4:14; 10:10]
9. A deep sense of belonging, family, part of something “big” or “important” [Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6]
10. A keen awareness of others: “empathetic understanding” to use Carl Roger’s phrase [John 11:35; Romans 12:15]
11. Meaningful friendships [John 15:15; 1 Corinthians 1:9]
12. Appreciative of the contributions, successes, and achievements of others as adding to their well-being. [1 Corinthians 12:24]
13. Strong ethical and moral principles [Exodus 20:1-17]
14. Non-defensive, not easily offended, but accepting of the opinions and feelings of others Non-hostile sense of humor. [Galatians 4:12]
15. Creative, active ministry [1 Corinthians 12: 7, 11]

I might not be the best person to raise this issue but isn’t it far time to challenge the use of the term “racist” when we are really talking about a prejudice, NOT based on skin color, but, ethnic differences?

Ethnicity is “belonging to a social group that has a common … CULTURAL tradition.” Different ethnicities means different languages; different foods, different rituals, including worship; different social values, a different importance placed on community and family …to name a few.

In America there was no legacy culture—unlike many other nations that have histories of traditions that define what it means to be who they are as a nation. We started with 13 colonies for that reason. We have always been a nation of immigrants or descendants of immigrants. We are, in all honesty, already multilingual. Our cuisine was borrowed from a global buffet. Our government is not parliamentary, as other democracies, though, many Americans don’t understand this and that is a constant political soreness.

If there is a common thread it has to be the belief that there is a FREEDOM in America to live unencumbered by a national mindset that restricts one’s dream of a fulfilling and “happy” life. The Declaration of Independence reads,

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men .. are endowed by their Creator with certain … Rights, … among these are … Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

And maybe in each one’s personal pursuit after this dream, we began to climb over one another on the way to the top [it’s called “hubris”]. Some are more inventive, more willing to take risks, to acquire that “freedom.” Prejudice is the idea that someone else because of their ethnicity is in the way and they should be pushed aside, or worse, exploited in order to reach that “top rung.”

The dictionary defines prejudice as “preconceived opinion that is NOT based on reason or actual experience.” There are a few things wrong with this definition. First, please don’t solicit “reason” to justify the notion that another person is “in the way” of your “happiness”! And second, prejudice profiles ALL persons of another ethnicity. There is an “individual” factor in how someone lives, and the values they place on experience—this should not be subject to the opinion of another!

Prejudice is, therefore, placing a personal value on someone else’s way of life which is based on opinion only [a judgment not based on knowledge] and NOT based on the other person’s own evaluation of themselves—not based on “getting to know them as a person, as American.”

“In Genesis 27:46, for example, Rebekah exclaims her frustration with Esau’s wives because of their ethnicity: “I’m disgusted with living because of these Hittite women,” she says to Isaac, her husband. “If Jacob [her other son] takes a wife from among the women of this land, my life will not be worth living.”

There are examples throughout the Bible of what ought not be! “[The] Jews do not associate with Samaritans.” John sadly wrote [John 4:9 ]. The Bible is alerting the wise to something that must be purged from Christian society. We don’t have to claim a friendship with every one living in America but when we do not, make sure it is not based on prejudice.

By the way: For the believer in Christ no other believer for any reason should be marginalized.

“Therefore accept (befriend) one another, just as Christ also accepted you, to the glory of God” [Romans 15:7].

Can there be an “up” without a “down”? A mountain peak without a valley? Do we recognize good only because it is not the evil we had known? Does happiness override sadness? Is love requited a sign that our loneliness is at an end?

What we are asking” Is it the bad that now serves to recognize the good for what it is? The greater the difference between opposites, the more pronounced that difference, the more we appreciate the change. “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection … becoming like him in his death,” Paul testified [Philippians 3:10]. God can even use the bad to develop the good in us. Paul noted that tribulation (stress, hard times, opposition) leads through patience, character, and hope to a recognition of God’s love [Romans 5:3-5].

The Lord never takes something away without replacing it with something else far better. [This is a wise practice counselors and therapists as well as medical professionals have discovered, that addictions cannot be starved to death without replacing them with more wholesome behavior.]

“Do not get drunk on wine,” Paul counseled, “which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit” [Ephesians 5:18]. Wine might be representative of all kinds of addictions from drugs, any entheogen, pornography, etc. Consider the exchanges God has made and will make in us that have transformed our lives:

• “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” [Ezekiel 36:26].
• “By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear” [Hebrews 8:13].
• “Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away” [Revelation 21:1].
• “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” [2 Corinthians 5:17].

Evil is not this way. With sin, things just get worse without any benefit in exchange. Satan doesn’t believe in filling an empty life with something better: “When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first.” [Luke 11:24-26]

We must not look on all the things we did that were self-destructive—before we knew the conviction of the Spirit and the forgiveness that is in Christ—as a worthless existence, irredeemable. A shameful past now serves to magnify what God has done and is doing for us and validates the change God is making in us for His glory [Romans 8:28].

We must reconcile with our past if it represents a life we no longer live thanks to Christ.