Families Faith and Freedom

Have you noticed how much attention is being paid to the families and the faith of the presidential and vice presidential candidates? Their children fascinate me: Barack Obama’s little girls during the Democratic national convention and Sarah Palin’s five children as she was presented as the Republican candidate for vice-president; Joe Biden’s son tearing up as he talked about how he and his bother call their step-mother Mother; and John McCain’s children surrounding their adopted sister from India. This presidential campaign has brought us more emphasis on family than any I remember, and I am grateful. I believe we have four fine families before us.
I appreciated Saddle Back Church and Rick Warren hosting a discussion with both Presidential candidates on the same night. We were enabled to hear something from the mouths of the candidates about their own faith in God and to get a feel for how they try to live out their faith. Rick Warren said, “I believe in separation of church and state, but not in separation of faith from politics.” I think he is right. We benefit from hearing the candidates talk about what they believe. Thank God for the freedom of religion we have in America. It is freedom for all religions.
A survey was conducted by the First Amendment Center. See http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/about.aspx?item=FAC_publications. The results showed that many people don’t understand our religious freedom.
28% of the American people, it said, believed that freedom of worship was never meant for fringe groups. They must not know that Baptists were a fringe group in the early days of the colonies. So were Catholics. So were Jews and Quakers and about any other religious group you can name.
46% strongly agreed that our founders intended the U.S. to be a Christian nation. Incredible! Our founders knew from the beginning that we were a mixture of orthodox Christians and Universalists and Deists like Thomas Jefferson, as well as Jews and others.
38% strongly agreed that the U. S. Constitution established a Christian nation, while 17% mildly agreed. How can that be? Have they not read the First Amendment to the Constitution?
Compare all this to dear old Roger Williams who founded Rhode Island and the First Baptist Church of Providence, Rhode Island: "It is the will and command of God that . . . a permission of the most Paganish, Jewish, Turkish or anti-Christian conscience and worships be granted to all men, in all nations and countries." One of my teachers, Dr. Walter Shurden says, “The Baptist point of view is freedom of conscience in the will of God for all people. No exceptions. None. Zilch.”

Ravenous Wolves

Jesus gave us a warning about our tendency to judge people by their outward appearance. He said, “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves” (Matthew 7:15). There are people who work on presenting an outward appearance that fools us into trusting them. They want our trust because they want to use us for their own selfish purposes. Jesus' guidance is this: Question your own judgment of another person’s impressive outward appearance. Looks can be deceiving. Don’t relax your vigilance. Pray for wisdom. Use your critical faculties. Be on your guard!

Years ago, a friend asked me if the church of which I was pastor could help a young woman. This compassionate man had developed a ministry to women in prison. One young woman in his imprisoned flock had gotten out of prison. She had an infant to whom she had given birth in prison. He was asking us to provide some diapers and formula for the baby. I found her living in a small apartment. The TV was prominent in the apartment. On the table was printed material from a certain “Television evangelist.” She told me that she has sent him some money. I asked why. “Because,” she said, “he told me that if I would send money to him, I would get more money.” I told her it was a scam. “Even though he looks and sounds holy,” I told her, “he just wants your money.”

Jesus calls false prophets “ravenous wolves.” “Ravenous” means “hungry”. They may talk about God’s love, but they are not living out of a fullness of God’s love. They are emptiness tying to be filled, and they will use you to fill it. That is why Jesus says, “Watch out!”

On Life’s Uncertainty and on Baptism

This has been a strange week. Tropical Storm Fay would not go away. Schools were closed, and Fleda has been at home working on our kitchen and cleaning the house. All of our church activities were canceled. As I write this note on Thursday morning, I am ready for things to get back to normal. I hope that Sunday when you read this Fay will be gone for good.

A tropical storm reminds us of the fact that we are not in control of many things in life. As we make our plans, we have to keep in mind how limited in knowledge and power we are. I think of The Book of James 4:13-15 in the Bible: “What do you know about tomorrow? How can you be so sure about your life? It is nothing more than mist that appears for only a little while before it disappears.”

James teaches us the wisdom of being humble about our plans. An event like Tropical Storm Fay is an opportunity to remember how unpredictable and uncontrollable life is. That leads to the wisdom of humility. There are some reasons to thank God for this strange week we’ve had with Fay.

Baptizing Bobbi Frederick is postponed until Sunday, September 7. I look forward to baptizing Bobbi, because she is so enthusiastic about it.

Here is what baptism means to us Baptists. We baptize those who are believers in Christ as a way of symbolizing that they are making a decision to follow Jesus and to trust him to save them. We baptize only those old enough to think it through and make a clear choice to commit their lives to Jesus.

We baptize by immersion under water because Jesus was baptized that way, because every baptism in the Bible is by immersion, and because it is a good way to show the meaning of salvation. Romans 6:4-5 describes it this way:

"Don't you know that all who share in Christ Jesus by being baptized also share in his death? When we were baptized, we died and were buried with Christ. We were baptized, so that we would live a new life, as Christ was raised to life by the glory of God the Father. If we shared in Jesus' death by being baptized, we will be raised to life with him."

When we go under the water, we die with Christ. When we come up out of the water, we are raised from death to our old life in order to live a new life with him.

I love to baptize people, because when we baptize them we are helping them to say, “I am giving my whole life to Jesus Christ.” Baptizing people by immersion is also, quite frankly, a lot of fun.

The Blessing

With his book, The Power to Bless, Dr. Myron Madden helped me to understand that we all have a need to be given a blessing from our parents and that a number of parents don’t have a blessing to give. Dr. Madden quotes Pat Conroy in The Prince of Tides. Speaking of his parents Conroy says, "I longed for their approval, their applause, their pure uncomplicated love for me, and I looked for it years after I realized they were not even capable of letting me have it.”

Recently, I have learned a new way to look at the issue of parental blessing from Dr. Greg Baer in his book Real Love. He says what we all need in order to be happy is “real love,” not imitation love. Real love is the blessing that comes from knowing I am seen and accepted just as I am. Mr. Rogers used to say to the children watching his TV neighborhood, “I like you just the way you are.” That is real love. Imitation love has to be earned. It is expressed in the phrase, “I love you because….” A parent who only smiles and complements a child when he or she performs well is teaching that child to earn imitation love. “I love you because you are such a good boy (or girl) who gets good grades, cleans the house, goes to bed on time.” Imitation love is “I love you because you have earned it.” Real love is “I care about your happiness without expecting anything in return."

If your parents could not give you the blessing because they just didn’t have it to give, where can you get the real love you need? Myron Madden says you turn loose of your need to receive it from your parents and you learn to accept it from your peers. This has been a tremendously helpful insight as I have tried to understand myself and to help others find emotional and spiritual health.

Greg Baer says real love is God’s love, and it flows through any human being who can accept me without my having to earn it. I don’t have to get it from any one person.

Don’t try to get anyone to love you. Tell the truth about yourself, put yourself out there just as you are, and you will see that there are many people who can be channels of God’s love and blessing by accepting you just the way you are.

God seeks to bless those who will be channels of blessing to others, to give real love to all persons. No one is excluded. In Genesis 12:3, God says to Abraham, "...and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” Jesus says to his disciples (people learning to do what Jesus does), “I give you a new commandment: love one another as I have loved you. This is how the world will know that you are my disciples” (John 13:34). If I call myself one who seeks to bring blessing, then my task is to live out God's intent to bless all people, not just the ones I like or the ones who do something for me.

God's Caring Presence and Alzheimer's Disease

This past week, I had a conversation with a woman whose husband has Alzheimer’s disease. I have recently presided at two funerals of people who died of this disease that causes so much emotional pain and suffering for both the patient and the family. It is now the 7th leading cause of death in America. The difficulties for the spouse of an Alzheimer’s patient are many.

There is the fact that the person who had been so independent now needs help with more and more of the everyday tasks of life. The person who has been your marriage partner for many years is no longer the person he or she used to be. The person who had an important job that required the ability to think clearly and make critical decisions is now unable to think through the simplest tasks. What a grief to look at your spouse and know that you are losing the ability to communicate with him or her.

It is very common that a person who has Alzheimer’s disease feels afraid. When the brain no longer tells you the basic information you need to feel safe – where you are, where your loved ones are, what is likely to happen when the doorbell rings, who you are and what family you belong to – then your fears take over. Some people who suffer from this disease become angry as a result of their fear and try to control the people around them.

Often the Alzheimer’s patient needs to be cared for in an institutional setting. Despite some people’s determination never to place their loved one in an institution of any kind, the patient often does better in the a nursing home or in an assisted living facility than in the care of a spouse at home.

Spiritual needs of the loved ones of an Alzheimer’s patient include the need for someone to listen and care and the need for assurance that the grace of God embraces persons who have lost their ability to think and control their emotions.

As I think about my conversations with people who have experienced caring for a spouse with Alzheimer’s, my question is how can we give assurance that God is still there with the person who doesn’t have the ability to think about God. Psalm 139 comes to mind. “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.”

The Law of Choice

More than one person has said to me across my years as a pastor, “If only I could get my son to be responsible. He is making our lives miserable,” or “If only I could get my daughter to behave, I could have a little peace.” The thing I have come to see after hearing this kind of sentiment over the years is that a parent cannot choose how a son or daughter is going to behave. Our children get to make their own choices.

I have come to see “the law of choice” as one the most important laws in life. Paul referred to it when he said in Galatians 6:7, “People reap what they sow.” Each of us is responsible for the choices we make and for accepting the consequences that flow from our choices. That includes our children and grandchildren.

If I tell myself that somehow someone else is responsible to make me happy, I deny the law of reaping and sowing also known as the law of choice. I am wrong if I think I get to control how somebody else lives in order to make me happy. Nobody has to do what I want.

If my happiness depends on another person’s behavior, then that person has control of me. If you “make me angry” and therefore unhappy, then you have the ability to control my feelings at will. Anytime you want to, you can “make me so mad!” I am putting you in control of my emotions. That is not a good way to live is it?

This truth has come to mean so much to me that when I am talking to someone who is telling me about the destructive behavior of a son or daughter, I say, “Let them reap what they sow.” Don’t yell at them in anger to try to motivate them. They will not hear the lesson. Let them feel the pain of their destructive choice whatever it is. Pain that comes as a consequence of a choice is a much better teacher than you are. Your child may not listen to your words, but inconvenience and consequences will get through. C. S. Lewis said, “God whispers to us in our pleasures. God shouts at us in our pain.” This is how I understand what Alanon, the organization for the loved ones of alcoholics means by its slogan, “Let go and let God.” They mean you cannot be in control of another person’s behavior. Recognize the law of choice. If a person in your family is choosing to drink or to misbehave in any way for that matter – don’t rescue or make excuses. Let that person face the consequences of his or her own choices. That is the only way any of us can learn how reality works, how God works.

New Hope's Movement Toward Mission and Vision

Our Church Health Team will have its first meeting on Tuesday evening, August 12 at 6:00. When you pray, ask God to give this team of church members wisdom and energy for their important work for New Hope. Church Health Team members Elaine Hardy, Jim McCroskey, Cheryl Secunda, John Wood, and Bill Batchelor are going to help us accomplish the following:

• Develop a clear Mission that defines God's purpose for our church.
• Develop a Vision that paints the picture of God's preferred future for New Hope Baptist Church.
• Define our church's Core Values.
• Develop Goals that are aligned with our Mission and are being worked into our ministry.
• Develop a clear strategy to reach our Goals with specific Action Plans and a process to make sure that we review our plans and communicate to all of our members concerning our progress.
• Implement a clear Organizational Structure and a simple, repeatable process for organizing ministries.

There is love for one another within our church. New Hope’s buildings and grounds are looking good. Now we need to develop a clear vision of our future and a process for getting there. We are commissioned to help the people of Port Orange know and love God as revealed in Jesus. Our Church Health Team will help us see how we can do an effective job of fulfilling that commission.