Tried With Fire

Do not act unjustly when deciding a case. Do not be partial to the poor or give preference to the rich; judge your neighbor fairly. Lev. 19:15 Do not deny justice or show partiality to anyone. Do not accept a bribe, for it blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the righteous. Deut. 16:19 I've been troubled with the partisan ethics that have come to the surface since the 2016 election cycle. Perhaps these were always in place, but they seem to be more prominent now and increasing rather than decreasing. "If my guy is under scrutiny, it must be a conspiracy. If it is someone on the other side, then throw the book at him." These things ought not to be. And yes, the president, Roy Moore, and Brett Kavanaugh come to mind. As Christians, we should have one standard regardless of whether a person is an ideological friend or foe. If others act partially, they will have to answer to God for their unjust scales. But that is no excuse for me to do the same....

Suffering has been the latest Sunday school topic at my church. The class has been very helpful and thought-provoking. It has probably been challenging for the teacher to try to condense this weighty subject because suffering touches on the sovereignty of God, the problem of evil, justice, and ethics to name a few. But the class has been the easy part. The hard part will be applying what I have learned. Also a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Just because I've read books or have been through a class on suffering doesn't necessarily mean I will be sensitive to others in their pain. As I've been mulling over this, here are some thoughts that come to mind: Don't lump a suffering in a single category. The sorrows of life in a fallen world are not the same as evil being perpetrated by sinful people. Don't put suffering on a scale and be the judge of who is suffering more or less. Be careful of an unbalanced view of God's sovereignty such that the categ...

Scandals involving Christian organizations/celebrities broke shortly before I went on vacation. I told my daughter it was probably a good thing I was taking an Internet break. I tend not to be a big "issue" person, but I make a very strong exception when it comes to abuse and any alleged cover-up within the Christian community. I thought time and distance would cool-off my response. Evidently not. I am still grieved and heartbroken. I get a gnawing pit in my stomach every time a fresh account is made public of alleged abuse within Christian circles. This not only includes abuse in its criminal forms but spiritual abuse as well. This causes me to wonder -  does spiritual abuse provide the necessary cover under which other forms of abuse can hide in a Christian environment? Having witnessed several incidents over the past decades, there is nothing so disheartening as Christian leaders sweeping sin under the rug. When the scandal involves celebrities, the news spreads far...

What is the just-world phenomena? Basically human beings believe or want to believe the world is just. Therefore, when something inexplicable happens to someone, we try to explain the event in a way that reconciles it with our understanding of the world. It may result in aid for and defense of the victim, but often this results in our perceiving the victim as having done something to deserve the suffering. Dr. Melvin J. Lerner , the psychologist who coined the phrase, describes it like this: A Just World is one in which people "get what they deserve." The judgment of "deserving" is based on the outcome that someone is entitled to receive. A Person "P" deserves outcome "X" if P has met the appropriate preconditions for obtaining X. What is implied, also, is that P desires X. If P does not get X, or receives something of less value than X, then P has not received all he or she deserves. Of course, the outcomes in question can be negative rat...

God's anger is the anger of grace. It is not the violent anger of unbridled fury. God's anger always works to right what is wrong. That is what grace does. This gracious anger has two sides to it: justice and mercy. In the gracious anger of justice, God works to punish wrong, but he does even more… He will not rest until evil is no more and justice and righteousness reign forever and ever! There is also another side to his gracious anger. It is the anger of mercy. In mercy he works to convict … he works to forgive … he works to empower … he works to deliver … until every microbe of sin is completely eradicated from every cell of the heart of every one of his children. Where do we see both sides of God's anger coming together in one moment? On that hill outside the city gate where Jesus hung. That is where we see justice and mercy kiss. As he hung there, Jesus bore the full weight of the justice of God's anger. He paid the penalty our sin required. And on the c...

Domestic violence is an issue that deeply concerns me. I would like to be proven wrong, but this seems to be an area where the evangelical church has not risen to the challenge. "In fact, research has shown that Christian women stay far longer in the abusive context and in far more severe abuse than their non-Christian counterparts." 1 This should not be, especially among the people of God.  So what can we do to help? Well, we can begin by: 1. Acknowledging that abuse exists, not only out there but within the homes of professing Christians. If we remain in denial, there is no one to help because they don't exist, that is at least to us. If we continue to bury our heads in the sand, the victims in our congregations will continue to suffer in silence because they know they will not be believed. Helping begins by facing reality. 2. Understanding the nature of abuse. It is about POWER and CONTROL . It is not just the need for anger management. It is n...

When I was young, my sister and I would play house. If we were in the mood, we would go back in time to "the olden days" and imagine we were a pioneer or colonial family. We even used a cardboard tube from Christmas wrapping paper as a pump handle and made sure we did not turn on the tap in the play sink. But we didn't know how hard life was back then. It never dawned on me, as a child, that Laura and her family nearly starved to death during that long, hard winter . Families in the community banded together and held a Pride and Prejudice Ball several years ago. I sewed matching regency ball gowns for my daughter and myself. We attended English country dance lessons in preparation. It was so easy to romanticize about life in that era especially after watching the Colin Firth/Jennifer Ehle version over and over again. But we were pretending to be the gentry, not servants or the working classes who had no ability to "quit the sphere" in which they were born. ...

The issues of sin and justice have been on a back burner in my mind for several years. One particular aspect is the idea of moral equivalence - where all sins are considered equal. This older post by Kevin DeYoung is worth reading, the majority of which is also in Hole in our Holiness . In the book, he references The Holiness of God where R.C. Sproul states that all sins require atonement but all sins are not equal. [I]t seems humble to act as if no sin is worse than another, but we lose the impetus for striving and the ability to hold each other accountable when we tumble down the slip-n-slide of moral equivalence... When we can no longer see the different gradations among sins and sinners and sinful nations, we have not succeeded in respecting our own badness, we've cheapened God's goodness. 1 The idea of gradations of sin is important for us to keep in mind so we understand the difference between sin and gross sin . Again, all of our sins require forgiveness. All of...