Who Needs Religion?

So I have been wondering why people who have no involvement with the church want to present their children for baptism. I am thinking it might be because the church is irrelevant to their lives except for particular events. The church provides a service on the boundaries of life, as Bonhoeffer would term it. When people get baptized, worship on Sunday, join a church, or die, it all seems a fitting transitional ritual. It may also be why people take communion. It signals the importance of individual salvation but not necessarily how to live one’s life.

But this is not what Jesus had in mind. He came into every aspect of humanity’s life. He did not come asking the question, “What’s in it for me?” His appearance on earth was to show how the Father was to be involved in all human life. Immanuel means God with us.

Bonhoeffer suggests that Christ wants to be with us in our strengths as well as in our weaknesses. He wants to be part of our lives so that in living well we can be part of others’ lives, particularly the others who are suffering. And if we are so worried about ourselves, our pains, our eternal salvation, well, then we won’t be inclined to live and even die for others. And, as Bonhoeffer, wrote, “The church is only the church when it is for others.”

Christ is not only for those who run out of answers because, if that is the case, then when the world finds its own answers it will have no more need for God. No, Christ is the Lord for all of life, not just in those places where religion seems to call on his name.

So…. when someone comes to the church for a baptism, for example, it will be important for the church, representing Christ, to be involved in their whole lives, walking with them, as it were, in the journey to raise their children to know Christ.

Stay tuned for how that will happen within our own church.

Yours in Christ,
George

Conscience is Overrated

It all started in the Garden (see Gen. 3) where Adam and Eve developed their own conscience, a little voice in their head that told them, for example, that they were naked. Conscience is really the self talking to the self, as opposed to listening to God and doing the will of God.

Adam and Eve knew the will of God until they decided they wanted to be like God - knowing good from evil - and ever since, the conscience has really been an unreliable source for doing the will of God.

Conscience really drives us from God, for in knowing good and evil we find ourselves unable to stand in the grace of God (I borrowed this from Bonhoeffer). Conscience is too undependable. Take Germany under Hitler, for example. The voice of Hitler became the conscience for the German people.

Conscience has too many forces acting on it. It muddles the will of God.

No, I think Christians need only the will of God in their lives. Stop listening so much to your conscience and instead listen to God’s will as revealed through Jesus in the Scriptures.

Yours in Christ,
George

Praying to End Abortion

So, I am reading this great book, unPlanned, the story of the former director of Planned Parenthood in Bryan, Texas. After watching a baby being aborted through an ultrasound-guided process called vacuum aspiration, she left her position. The story chronicles the life of Abby Johnson and her desire to help women in distress. While firmly believing in “choice”, she wants to do everything to lessen the number of abortions. Here is a website you can check for yourself: http://www.unplannedthebook.com/

Anyway, the Planned Parenthood Clinic was next door to a Coalition of Life Center and Abby got to know some of the more “sane” and compassionate leaders of the Center. The Coalition folks would hold a prayer vigil twice a year for 40 days, 24 hours each day, simply praying for an end to abortion. Abby was struck by such sincere prayer. Why wouldn’t anyone, regardless of political persuasion, want an end to abortion?

It got me to thinking that all Christians ought to be praying daily for an end to abortion; that God will somehow intervene with His mercy and make a way for less and less children to die in the womb and instead be brought into the loving arms of a mom or dad, family member, or adoptive parents. Should that not be a number one priority on the part of Christians, for the dignity of life inside and outside the womb?

I am myself trying to remember each day in all my prayers to pray for the life of the unborn and the end of abortion. I am praying in confidence that God will hear my prayers, the prayer of his child praying for his children.

I hope others will join this Journey of prayer. I hope our church might even decide to hold a prayer vigil.

Yours in Christ,
George