Religion
Showing posts with label John Piper. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Piper. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Justice ... Interrupted

So, here we are. Forty years since women won the right to abort their babies and we sit on the precipice of another watershed ruling from the Supreme Court. On the docket this time: same-sex marriage.

“This is the new calamity,” laments evangelical John Piper. “Christians, more clearly than others, can see the tidal wave of pain that is on the way. Sin carries in it its own misery.” 
Talk show host Rush Limbaugh believes we got to this point due to linguistics, “I maintain to you that we lost the issue when we started allowing the word ‘marriage’ to be bastardized and redefined by simply adding words to it – because marriage is one thing, and it was not established on the basis of discrimination. It wasn’t established on the basis of denying people anything … Marriage is not a tradition that a bunch of people concocted to be mean to other people with. But we allowed the left to have people believe that it was structured that way.”

When the Supreme Court hears all the evidence to determine whether it should legalize same-sex marriage, the justices will be working in the shadow of a 40-year-old decision: Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that established a constitutional right to abortion. “They thought they were resolving a contentious issue by taking it out of the political process but ended up perpetuating it,” John C. Eastman, the chairman of the National Organization for Marriage and a law professor at Chapman University, said of the justices who decided the abortion case. “The lesson they should draw is that when you are moving beyond the clear command of the Constitution, you should be very hesitant about shutting down a political debate.”

We are at a major crossroads in the history of humanity as this decision looms. Homosexuality has always existed since man has walked the earth and women have always had the right to do whatever they want to their own bodies – pregnant or not. However, no one before us saw the need to legalize either act.
It is time to face the facts. We live in an era where the number one cause of death is no longer a disease. More than 50 million babies are aborted annually worldwide by conservative estimates. This is roughly the population of England. We are killing a nation of people every year. Let that sink in for a moment. An entire nation … every year.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, we are on the verge of legalizing a union between two adults that cannot procreate.
Many Christians say if gay marriage is legalized then God’s judgment will fall. I say it is already here. Murder on one end; inability to procreate on the other. If you do the math that equals annihilation. God needs to do nothing.

The reality that these two rulings could potentially occur 40 years apart is worrisome as the number 40 in the Bible is used by God to represent a period of testing or judgment. The 40 days of rain in the days of the flood were the judgments of God. The 40 years that the Israelites spent in the wilderness were also the judgments of God. Egypt was left desolate for 40 years because of God's judgments.
Abortion was passed with the expressed purpose of “helping” women safely terminate a pregnancy if their life was in danger or if they were a victim of rape or incest. Today, 86 percent of abortions are performed out of convenience. Planned Parenthood views abortion as an alternative contraceptive and offers an abortion pill that women can take at home to end a pregnancy within the first nine weeks. It is one of the most routinely performed surgeries worldwide and is as common as an appendectomy. I think we can agree we have seen God’s judgments within all the ugliness that is abortion.

Yet, what have we learned?  Not much. Even Boy George, the English singer-songwriter of the 80’s mega pop band “Culture Club” and open homosexual admits that marriage is “probably too conservative for most gays.” But the cry rings out to legalize a union that God calls an abomination.
We are treading on dangerous ground. We are reaping what we are sowing and the harvest is corruption.

Nevertheless, there are no signs of the gay marriage movement slowing down. With that, I echo John Piper’s closing sentiments on this issue, “This is what I am writing for. Not political action, but love for the name of God and compassion for the city of destruction. 'My eyes shed streams of tears, because people do not keep your law (Psalm 119:136).'”

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Cultivating a Heart of Thanksgiving

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I must admit that as a child I kind of glossed over Thanksgiving in anticipation of Christmas. I never really liked turkey as a child which may also have contributed to my blasé feeling toward it. But as an adult, it is by far my favorite holiday. I love getting together with my family (I am one of seven children) and eating all the delicious food and watching football. Of course, the Patriots are playing as well this year which makes it even more special.

In contemplating Thanksgiving and God’s command for us to be thankful in all things (Ephesians 5:20), I am reminded of God’s most important gift to all of us who know Him as our Savior – Himself. For you see, God could have given us temporal riches to enjoy in this world but He has always had in view our number one need – redemption. John Piper once said that “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.” And this really is the key to the abundant life that Jesus promised would be ours in Him. So often in today’s world where gain is mistakenly for godliness as Paul said it would be (1 Timothy 6), we look toward temporal blessings as an indication of God’s favor and miss the fact that Jesus reminded us often that life does not consist in the abundance of things but IN Him alone (Luke 12:13-21).

Nancy Leigh DeMoss has written a wonderful book called Choosing Gratitude: Your Journey to Joy, which I highly recommend reading as it has helped me to think about the importance of gratitude in my walk. She states that gratitude is a choice and if we fail to chose it, by default we choose ingratitude. And when we do choose a lifestyle of heartfelt, humble gratitude, we are mindful of the benefits received from our gracious Savior and those He has placed around us. By intentionally thanking God and others, bitterness and entitlement are replaced with joy and the humble realization of just how undeserving we really are.

DeMoss also challenges us to give thanks not only to God but to other people. She deftly points out that the Apostle Paul thanks people in all but four of his epistles. She also includes a 30-day devotional guide to help readers practically implement gratitude into their daily walk.

I hope this Thanksgiving you will take some time to think about gratitude beyond just the one day that it is celebrated in this country and look toward developing a heart attitude of thanksgiving throughout the year. I am currently on this journey, which I must confess has not been easy at times, especially when I am hurt by others or suffer injustices, but it is at these times that God is urging me to be most thankful. I realize this seems like a paradox, but much of Christianity is the polar opposite of human reasoning because humanism at its core leads us away from God and from the precepts of His kingdom which bring true joy and contentment. I think one of the keys to living victoriously in this area is to never forget your own salvation. It is at the cross that we find all we truly need to be thankful for, and with that perspective, anything we suffer in this life can be counted as all joy.

I hope everyone has a blessed and peaceful Thanksgiving.

“Thanksgiving Day comes, by statute, once a year; to the honest man it comes as frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow.” - Edward Sandford Martin