Bleeding Kansas

Our constitution used to allow the worst kind of slavery, where people were considered simply property (with all the attendant depravity and cruelty--torture and even murder was legal). The Missouri Compromise said new states admitted to the Union north of Missouri had to be free states. Only those parts of the Western Territories south of MO (which was a slave state) could allow slavery. But then the rules were repealed so that Kansas could be allowed to determine if it would be a slave state by vote of its male white settlers. This created a border war that earned the state the name "Bleeding Kansas."

The issue of abortion has made the state once again into Bleeding Kansas. If a woman could get two other doctors to agree that carrying her baby full term would cause irreparable damage to her health, then Dr. Tiller of Wichita had one of three clinics in the country that would perform a late-term abortion. Most of those are grave and difficult circumstances because of the health of the mother or the deformity of the child, but sometimes a mental health exception was allowed as well. On Sunday Dr. Tiller was murdered while attending church.

To paraphrase one of my pastor friends, the abortion of Dr. Tiller is just as wrong as his killing unborn babies. No ifs, ands or buts. The son of the late Francis Schaeffer, evangelical apologist, now believes he and other pro-life leaders contributed to Tiller's murder by their extreme rhetoric.

You have to trace your rhetoric to its logical conclusion if you want to know if it is extreme. For example, if you really say all abortions are absolute murder of innocent children under every circumstance and even though it is allowed by law, then the conclusion is to break the law and kill those who are performing the murders. That is what "extremists" do. It is useless to urge restraint on them because they take their extreme rhetoric to its logical (to them) conclusion, unrestrained even by civil authority.

If you do that, don't claim you're doing something biblical or in line with Christlikeness. In fact, it will help the rest of us believers if you never again claim to be a Christian. The only people Jesus or Paul used extreme arguments with were the extremists themselves (Pharisees and Judaisers--both legalistic ultra-"fundamentalist" groups), and against sin in self (Matt 18:9), not with liberals, compromisers, socialists or etc. Toward civil authorities Jesus was generous (Matt 22:21), and gracious even to the occupiers of his people (Matt 8). The same can be said of Paul who treated Felix, Festus and Herod with respect.

You cannot profess and promote a prolife agenda by taking life, just like you cannot protest the propriety of homosexuality with hatred of homosexuals or fulfill the biblical mandate to be a good citizen by being a disloyal opposition to the President, Congress or courts.

Some people say you have to respect a person's choice even if it's wrong. If a person who is a believer chooses to abort a healthy baby instead of giving it up for adoption, we “respect” their “choice” to the degree the law allows them the freedom to do wrong personally, even if it is wrong biblically or morally. But I do not “respect” the gunman's “choice” to kill the doctor to prevent what he considers the murder of innocent babies.

Today we waste time getting distracted with political and even social crusades to the detriment of a biblical focus on the cross. In Roman times, after the baby was born the father had the option to give "thumbs down" to the newborn, and if he rejected it, the infant was placed outside to die of exposure. Paul says nothing about correcting pagan social customs--abortion or slavery--and keeps his eye on the prize. Satan distracts us because conversion to the cross of Christ is the only thing that will ultimately heal Bleeding Kansas.

Shameless Insistence

I was struck by a couple of lines in the blog update for Stephanie Vest recently (http://stephanievest.com/ ). “Please pray loudly, boldly, on your knees, with cries, tears, whatever it takes… we need Stephanie’s lungs to heal. It is OK to ask God for the same miracle multiple times - in a day, in an hour, and even in a minute! So keep the prayers comin!” [They now need her heart to heal further too, I might add, before they can continue the chemo treatment she needs so desperately.]

If Christ’s apostles needed instruction on prayer, maybe we do, too.

Obviously the pagans had a different idea of prayer than God’s people (1 Kings 18:26,28; Matt 6:7). Even among God’s people, the Pharisees had a different idea than the Publican (Luke 18:10-13), and even than Jesus (Matt 6:5-6). But the Bible’s instruction on prayer is not given by precept but by practice. Consider.

Paul’s judgment was that David was a man after God’s own heart (Acts 13:22). Take all the requests David made in Psalm 119, make them your requests, and now you are praying with the heart of God. Or further, take the Lord’s praying in John 17, occupy your own heart with his requests, and you find out something about how to pray.

Human nature, contemporary culture, and our skewed or missing view of God’s kingdom all contribute to our ignorance about true, biblical prayer. There are also the false-prophet (profit?) faith persuasions that blame your lack of faith for the failure of their “word of knowledge.”

So how can we learn how to pray? Study the “Lord’s Prayer” in Matt 6 and Luke 11. Its focused requests about the kingdom balance praise with daily bread, and receiving forgiveness with forgiving others.

Study the stories. Jesus taught on prayer by talking about the friend at midnight and the father who gives his children good gifts. He taught us how to process personal injustices by narrating the tale of the widow and the judge. But maybe the lesson most apropos to our societal situation is the contrast between the self-focused absorption of the Pharisee and the smitten self-awareness of unholiness in the Publican.

Pray loudly, boldly, on your knees, with cries, tears (see Jesus in Gethsemane). It is OK to ask God for the same miracle multiple times (see the story in Luke 11 of the man who asked with importunity—earnestly with shameless insistence).

Continue praying for Eric and Stephanie and their kids. Healing her is like God delivering no more than a loaf of bread. But it is receiving more than a loaf of bread to us.

Scan the Plan, Stan

Want to avoid confusing contradictions in scripture? Make sure you read each part of the Bible, keeping in mind the whole.

The background starts in the beginning. Genesis 1-11 covers 2000 years in 11 chapters. Genesis 12-50 covers only 400 years in 39 chapters. Beginning in Gen 2, Adam and Eve were in innocence in the Garden of Eden. That age of innocence ended in failure with the fall into sin.

Next, in Gen 3-6, God dealt with the growing human race by leaving them to act according to conscience. But it got so bad that God wiped out the entire world except for Noah and started over with him and his family.

So in Gen 7-11 God dealt with humanity under a system of human government. Government failed to fulfill God’s plan and went totally in the opposite direction (Gen 10), so God came down in judgment, confused the languages and separated the nations.

So starting in Gen 12 God does something different again. He takes one individual (Abraham) and makes him a promise based on Abraham’s faith. God begins to fulfill that promise miraculously with the birth of Isaac. So now God begins a process of redemption that starts with one family, to redeem the whole human race.

By the time you reach the book of Exodus, that family has grown into a nation. God now deals with them according to the law through a sacrificial system. As you read the rest of the historical books of the OT, you see that nation fail under the priests (in the book of Judges), then under the kings (Kings and Chronicles) and finally under the prophets (the last 17 books of the Old Testament).

So when Christ arrives in the "fullness of time," at least five different ways of dispensing salvation have been tried (five “dispensations”) and each one ended in human failure. God’s answer is to take it upon himself to redeem mankind, and he does so when Christ comes. This begins the dispensation of grace.

Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of the promise of a Jewish Messiah. So he first had to go to the Jews to offer them the kingdom. The four gospels record how they rejected both the kingdom and the king, and crucified him. God simply turned that into part of his plan, and inaugurated a “mystery,” which he explains to Paul as “the church age.” In the dispensation of the grace of God, the kingdom of God is spiritual, and the blessings of the new covenant are given to Gentiles without them having to fulfill any Jewish obligations.

Paul explains this in Romans 9-11 as God’s way of making the Jews jealous in order to draw them back to Christ. This will be successful, but not until the end of the church age, after the church (which is the body and bride of Christ) is raptured to be with him before the Second Coming.

Maranatha. Even so come, Lord Jesus.

Commander's Intent

A soldier's every move is predicated upon hours of forethought and planning. After the commander-in-chief approves the order of battle, a soldier will find his personal orders specifying the scheme of maneuver and field of fire. Each battalion is told what to do, what materiel to use, and how to set up supply lines to replace its munitions.

There's only one problem: no plan survives contact with the enemy because the enemy always gets a vote. Consider the variables: weather changes, a key military asset is destroyed after it is deployed. In short, the enemy is unpredictable. Churches fail like armies fail. They put their effort into creating plans that become useless once the enemy is engaged.

So in the 1980s the US Army reinvented its process by instituting a concept called Commander's Intent (CI). CI is one succinct, clear and concrete statement that appears at the top of every order. It specifies the plan's goal. It diagrams the end-game and gives the ultimate objective. It is not just the desired outcome, but the ordered one.

CI: Break the will of the insurgency in Anbar Province.

CI: Put Third Battalion in Saddam City to clear the neighborhood of insurgents so political leaders are secured.

The beautiful thing about knowing the CI is that it means your plans are never rendered obsolete by the unpredictable. You may lose the ability to execute the plan (involving the timing of men and materiel), but you never lose the responsibility of executing the Commander's Intent. So if there is just one soldier left in Saddam City, he'd better be doing something to protect the political leaders as they pass through it.

CI manages to align the behavior of soldiers at all levels of the army without requiring detailed instructions from the High Command. If you know the intention of the order, you are free to improvise to arrive at its fulfillment. If people know the intent, they can engineer their own solutions to accomplishing the task.

Boo-yah! That's why we have church buildings, Sunday School classes, and pass offering plates, even if some of the early churches did not. And this is why I get questions about discipleship like:
· Why doesn't Paul use the word discipleship in his epistles?
· Is the Matthew 18 Great Commission for the church today?
· Are we wrong to build entire ministries geared toward making disciples?
· Can we model our discipleship ministry after Jesus without violating any dispensational boundaries, or is Matthew 28:18-20 just for Jesus' Jewish apostles in their immediate post-resurrection ministry?
· Isn't discipleship more of a "Kingdom" (with a capital K) idea for the apostles, than a "mystery" idea for the church...yadda yadda?

The fact you are asking the question shows you missed it. Matt 28 (and this is not the only place) is the CI. Watch!

"Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen." Matthew 28:19-20

What is the Commander's Intent? Not going. Going is only a plan. Why? Because it does not survive contact with the enemy.

Still don't agree? Then go. Going in itself accomplishes nothing except putting you in another place. So while that is part of the plan, it is not the CI. Neither is baptism. A lot of "churches" baptize as the centerpiece of their sacraments, but that doesn't even make someone a Christian.

Only when you "teach all nations" (make disciples of everyone, not just Jews but also Gentiles) are you fulfilling the Commander's Intent. The CI is discipleship. Then why doesn't Paul talk about discipleship in his epistles? Because Jesus is dealing with the descriptive, but Paul is talking about the doctrinal.

Four words in the Hebrew and four words in the Greek are all there is to describe discipleship. The descriptive approach will note that the word disciple is used proportionately almost as much in Acts as in the Gospels, but is not used after that. Don't get seduced into the Dark Side of the dispensationalist Force by believing the Great Commission was strictly a Kingdom (of heaven) approach.

Add-in the methodological because discipleship is the CI from Gen 1:28 on down. If Paul did not repudiate a concept (as being incompatible with "the mystery of the revelation of the gospel of the grace of yadda-yadda"), then it is still valid today. If you do not take that approach then you end up building a theology based on inference. The verses don't say what you say they say, but you infer certain things to be true so that it will all make sense to you. Things like two bodies (or two churches—Kingdom and Mystery), or yadda yadda.

The Commander's Intent is discipleship. That is why, in Acts, Paul and Barnabus set out for the regions beyond to "make disciples" of all nations. In the epistles, theology and methodology have not changed, but Paul now calls the disciples, saints. Why? Because they were a different audience! In Paul's epistles he is dialoguing in the Greek mindset. So Paul morphs Jewish rabbinical practice into a Gentile, biblical "in the church" principle.

Discipleship is now saintship, and that is the Commander's Intent. It is not so much that dispensations have changed, but the makeup of the church changed because of the dispensations. So we focus on saintship and build ministries focused on making saints. But Jesus mostly called that discipleship because that's what rabbis did. But that wasn't inconsistent with the original commission to multiply and replenish the earth with the goal of recovering dominion (CI).

Paul did not know Jesus after the flesh. That is why in the epistles he calls us Gentile disciples, "saints," instead of disciples. Hope this makes sense, because since Paul didn't need to reinvent the wheel, he knew we were smart enough to read the gospels for ourselves and be able to recognize a methodology (in Jesus) that did not conflict with his (Paul's) theological descriptiveness.

But maybe more than just theological descriptiveness, because Paul was dealing with Gentiles, and they had issues that the typical Jew did not. So besides the doctrinal descriptiveness, what Paul did was to wrap discipleship (sainthood) around the idea of the new/old man, putting on/off, and what I call "the vices in his verses" (Paul's several "vice lists"). This is how the CI is translated down into the actions of the individual soldier!

So in Matt 28 Great Commission terms, Paul's "going" (of which he did a lot, along with baptizing and teaching where he went) was in order to use evangelism as a tool to make disciple-saints and form them into churches. Making babies alone is not fulfilling fatherhood. So evangelism without discipleship is not really making saints.

All discipleship is, is making saints through spiritual parenting. That is the Commander's Intent, and it turns evangelism and discipleship into two sides of the same coin, just like repentance and faith, trust and obey, etc.

I asked a hyper-diaper one time, "So what part of the Great Commission do you not do? As far as I know, you are still baptizing (though some hypers do not), and yet you still say 'I doesn't believe in the Great Commission' because 'it is not for the church' and therefore, 'we [KCBT-ers] are not taking a stand on the word of yadda yadda.'"

The CI transcends dispensations. How did the hyper-diapers miss that, all these years?

Boo-Ya!

We move from evangelical overreach by the political "right" to evangelical underreach by the "theologically right." One of our Shepherd School students who is also an international student studying at a university in Kansas City asked me a question recently.

“I cannot find a good explanation about 2 Samuel 24:13 and 1 Chronicles 21:12. First one says seven years of famine, and second one says three years.”

He goes on to say, “I’m reading Basic Theology by Charles C. Ryrie. He believes in the inerrancy of the Bible, but I don’t think he has the same opinion about manuscripts and translations of the Bible as we believe. His book says ‘The Septuagint translation says three years in both places, so likely the figure in 2 Samuel is a scribal error. (It has been changed to say three years in some versions, including the NIV.) Though copies were very carefully made, errors inevitably crept in. This seems to be one, but it is not an error in the original—that was inerrant when it was written, but inerrancy cannot be extended to the copies.’

Really? So the same Spirit that gave us the originals through inspiration cannot be relied upon to preserve an inspired text of what he gave? How wonderfully existential. Now Charles, since I know you eschew crystal balls and that sort of thing, how do you KNOW the original did not say it just like we see it today? Just because you think it is a contradiction and an error? Did it never occur to you that it might be correct but that you just haven't figured out how to reconcile the two statements?

This created a dilemma for our intrepid student, who then asks, “I would like to know how I should understand this. Charles Ryrie tries to explain this is not a contradiction of the Bible, however, I believe God can preserve His word accurately. I cannot agree with his interpretation about this. The KJV says seven years and three years in these verses.”

Well, I hate to contradict C.C. Ryrie, because his body is 90% brain, but it is better to contradict him than contradict the Holy Ghost, AND I think there is a much better answer than the one he gives. He relies on the solution proposed by the ancient Septuagint (the Greek translation of these Old Testament Hebrew verses, which dates to the fourth century or earlier) and accepted by the NIV. That solution is to simply change one place to match the other and say the scribes copied it wrong.

There are a couple of “just so-so, okay” answers that would keep you from getting into the dilemma that Ryrie and the NIV do. Ryrie says he believes in inerrancy but admits he does not have an inerrant Bible; ...and he refers directly to the NIV in this camp. Some of these “scholars” are just too smart by half.

First, God could have talked to David more than once before David finally decided.

Second, the seven years concerned “thy land” specifically, whereas the three years were simply a general famine.

But the best answer (simple, elegant, and the one that Ryrie and the NIV translators missed by giving-in to the perfect scholars, imperfect scribes, and the Bible critics) is that four years of famine had already preceded David’s dilemma (2 Sam 21:1 = three years of famine plus a month more in verses 9-10 plus nearly a year to number the people in 2 Sam 24:8).

Boo-ya! So the seven years was three MORE years to make a TOTAL of seven. Maybe Ryrie missed it because he’s not so good at math. I don’t know what excuse to give for the NIV. Not completely God’s word, maybe?

Overreach of the Evangelical Right

I usually don’t comment on politics, but this is July 4th and on some occasions politics and religion do collide to provide fireworks. Such was the case last week when James Dobson watched a two year-old speech by one of the Presidential candidates and decided to take umbrage at it.

Most people are familiar with the Democratic Party’s (and their nominee’s) position on the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize abortion. That Focus on the Family founder Dobson disagrees with this is not news and does not create any sparks, and from what I could tell was not his only criticism against Obama.

My attention would probably not even be drawn to the exchange except that in channel-surfing on June 24th I let the remote land for a few moments on Anderson Cooper 360. CNN’s Cooper was interviewing a panel of three people about the controversy between Dobson and Obama, because everyone thinks the evangelical right will swing the election (and “evangelicals” seem none too enthusiastic about McCain, either). The panel included Roland Martin, Rev. Al Sharpton, and the President of the Family Research Council, Tony Perkins.

Perkins defended Dobson by stating in the Anderson Cooper 360 blog before the show: “Dobson said, ‘What [Obama is] trying to say here is unless everybody agrees, we have no right to fight for what we believe.’ Obama’s statement reflects the Democratic Party’s pre-2008 position, which is that you must check your faith at the gate of the public arena. Now that Democrats appear to have gotten religion, Sen. Obama is saying that while he is a Christian, he doesn’t think that faith or the Bible should have any role in shaping public policy. There’s either a disconnect between Sen. Obama’s faith and the policy positions he holds, or his theology is off.”

That was Perkins quoting and defending leader of the evangelical right, James Dobson. Anderson Cooper then played for Perkins an actual clip of Obama’s speech (which Dobson was criticizing) where Obama says, “What I am suggesting is that secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. So, to say that men and women should not inject their ‘personal morality’ into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of our morality, much of which is grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.”

Anderson Cooper: “That doesn’t sound like they are saying there is no role for religion in the public square.”

Rev. Sharpton eventually chimed in: “I don’t understand why we are reading things [into Obama’s speech] that clearly [were not] said in his speech.”

Let me reserve my criticism for my own camp (evangelicals). It is amazing me how Perkins and Dobson picked this fight and did it by distortion, and then when confronted with that distortion by Cooper (who Perkins later in the show said he had concern for his eternal destiny), Perkins would not admit it. He didn’t even blink. (Watch him whenever he contributes to CNN’s commentary; he is perpetually shaking his head, No, like he is afraid they will make a bobble-head doll based on his likeness if he ever assents agreement to anyone else.)

People get crazy over politics. But it makes me ashamed that those who are known as evangelicals do so, because there is clearly a disconnect between what Obama said and Dobson’s issues with it.

Much of Dobson’s rant is ideology, not theology, inasmuch as in the statement above he (apparently deliberately) did not correctly represent the view he was opposing.

Then I got to thinking biblically about the exchange. Did Paul tell disciples and saints it was necessity to espouse certain “moral” positions on social, public, or political policy? After all, there is a difference between bringing the church into politics on the one hand, and on the other hand dragging political issues into the church just because all decisions are moral choices.

You say, “But Rome did not have a participatory democracy like we do, so he couldn’t tell Christians to do that.” Yes, and did you notice that every Roman politician that really got to know Paul actually like him? Hello somebody! So why overreach to the extent that Dobson does in his religious zeal?

Much fell into focus for me on July 1st when I received an email from Tom Minnery of “Focus on the Family Action” that stated, “in the aftermath of Barack Obama’s aggressive attack on Dr. Dobson last week, the liberal media are piling on with more blatant falsehoods about Dr. Dobson and pro-family Christians.” Wait! Did Obama attack Dobson last week? Why do I wonder if somebody has gone senile here?

“All that Dr. Dobson had done was respond to a widely circulated speech by Obama comparing Dr. Dobson to Al Sharpton.” Really? Dobson and Sharpton were mentioned in the same sentence but actually, Obama was drawing a contrast between their two theologies.

How strange. Why would you send out inflammatory email making false charges? Just to strike up sparks for the Fourth?

“Focus Action is going to continue raising questions...but to do so, we need your help.” Ah so. I wonder, by “help,” do you mean money? “In the past few weeks alone, Focus Action has spent tens of thousands of dollars…”. Let me guess. On your salary. “…and we are dependent on the support of friends like you.”

That puts it all in Focus!

Redemptive Purpose

Thursday and Friday
(Our trip Blog was written by Jackie Dorsey)

We said goodbye to our host Dr. Simmons Thursday morning as he returned to Kansas City. That left us somewhat on our own to get around town from the hotel to the worksite and to the university for meals. Thankfully Jody had her Blackberry with her so, you guessed it, the Blackberry started talking to Alan, and got us everywhere we needed to go. Shakespeare said there are sermons in stones; we all got a Blessing from the Blackberry.


We were glad to find that the electrical contractor had finished most of the new wiring in the house by Thursday morning, so we were able to make a lot of progress in our last two days. Our team installed insulation throughout Deborah’s three bedroom, two bath home, and put up dry wall in all three bedrooms. Although the team was tired, we were also determined to finish these rooms for her, so she could really see and have a sense of progress and moving closer to her goal of finally being able to be back home in New Orleans.
Thursday evening while some of us were seeing more of the city, we were shocked and saddened to learn of the passing of our brother Jason Bradley. He was a close friend to several on our team and a member of our Career Class. Our hearts and prayers were with Jason’s family and our KCBT family even as we were fulfilling our mission. Jason had experienced the ultimate home going and while we will miss him we are comforted in knowing we will see him again soon.

New Orleans was an experience I’m sure our team will not forget. I for one went with the intention to give—time, strength, encouragement and hope. I truly believe I received far more than I gave. The people we met and the spirit of faith and hope we felt ministered to us even as we ministered and served.Our team returned Saturday morning exhausted but blessed. Everyone on the team did their unique part with a spirit of unity and oneness of purpose. Redemptive Purpose.