humanity

05
Mar
2023

A creed for personal confidence

For those who may struggle with low self-worth and pressure themselves into perfectionism

This past week’s podcast episode of Cafeteria Christian was entitled, “Giving Up Perfectionism for Lent.” The thoughts shared there reminded me of many ministry students I worked with over the years. This was something I wrote for them.

– David Sellnow

Confidence anchored in Christ

I am a child of God.  I have a Father who has lavished me with his love and calls me his very own.   I need not worry about what anyone in the world thinks of me, because I am already and always a child of God. And what I will become in my future with Christ is even greater than I can imagine.  (1 John 3:1-2)

I am a worthwhile person.  I have talents and abilities that are uniquely my own.  I don’t need to try to be as this as someone else or as that as someone else.  Each person has their own gifts to use, their own role to play.   I simply will accept who I am and the character and gifts God has given to me.  I won’t worry about what I’m not or what I haven’t yet become.  I will walk in the Lord and with the Lord, and he will lead me to surmount whatever challenges I face.  (Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12)

Image credit: Ridwan Jaafar on Flickr

I am a human being.  I know that I fall short of glory in so many ways, but that hasn’t stopped God from loving me or redeeming me.  I do not have to achieve perfection as a person.  Indeed, I need to admit that I can’t achieve perfection, even in small things.  I will stop trying to chase perfection in one thing after another, because such a pursuit only wears me out in body and soul.  Instead, casting all my anxieties on the Lord, bringing him all my weariness and burdens, I know he will care for me. I will find rest for my soul. (Romans 3:23-24, 1 Peter 5:7, Matthew 11:28)

I can conquer all things through Christ, who loves me.  I can do all things through him who gives me strength.  I may be weak and frail in myself, but Christ’s grace is sufficient for me.  His power is made perfect in my weakness.  The only perfection I need is his.  No task, no challenge, no hardship, no criticism, no pain or pressure of any kind will ever be able to separate me from the love that God has for me or the love that my friends in God have for me.  So I can love myself.  I will love myself.  In Jesus I am loved and lovable.  In Jesus I am strong and capable.  In Jesus I am alive and life is livable.  (Romans 8:37-39, Philippians 4:13, 2 Corinthians 12:9)

I am human.  I am imperfect.  That will always be the case, as long as I walk on this earth.  But I will walk tall and grow strong, because my Lord and his love go with me.  No one—not even I myself by my own insecurities—will be able to stand in my way, because my God will never leave me nor forsake me. (Joshua 1:5-9)

I am loved.  I am a child of God.  I need not be discouraged or afraid.

A version of this article was published in 2014 in Forward in Christ magazine.

Posted by David Sellnow
05
Jun
2022

Teaching a Love for Souls

Pentecost Sunday, 2022

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Luke’s Pentecost narrative [Acts chapter 2] challenges the church today to find even more effective ways of communicating the gospel to peoples in every land on earth. … Just as the early Christians moved beyond the land of Israel and the Jewish people, so we must help all the peoples in our world hear and express the gospel in their own languages and according to their own cultural patterns. – Daniel J. Harrington, “The Challenge of Pentecost,” America (May 5, 2008)

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Many peoples, one God

The sign over the classroom door encouraged students’ eagerness: “Enter with an open mind.” Inside, though, an open-minded approach was not consistently encouraged. In this elementary classroom at a Christian school, religious lessons for the month were focused on the practices of other groups, organizations, and faiths (different from the affiliation of the parochial school).  The children would come home and tell their parents, “Do you know what this (or that) group believes? They’re so weird!” The lessons were teaching young denomination members to judge others. One of the assignments, mislabeled as an “evangelism exercise,” asked the children to compose a letter that they would send to Tom Cruise, trying to convince him of the dangers and evils of Scientology.

Certainly, God tells us to be wary of temptations and to steer clear of false teachings. Yet our call as evangelists (proclaimers of good news) is to be warm and winsome in our witness to others, to be models and messengers of the character of Christ. It is an unhappy consequence if education efforts lead us to become insular and narrow and focused on our own ways and practices. Our discipleship goal in the body of Christ is not to close minds and hearts or isolate ourselves from others in our communities. Rather, we seek to expand and enrich our own understanding and reach out to others with the truths we have come to know in Christ. 

The apostle Paul advised us, “From now on … regard no one from a human point of view” (2 Corinthians 5:16). We don’t calculate who might be more inclined to agree with us or who seems too different from us. We take a view that is open to the wide variety of persons in our world–all of whom are people for whom Jesus died and rose again. We don’t close ourselves off from the world around us or avoid those who seem “weird” to us. [Truthfully, we likely seem “weird” to them too.]  Our aim is to live in the world and impact the world by the testimony of lives in Jesus. We want to be seasoned by the Spirit to serve as the salt of the earth, to walk as children of the light to give off light to the world (cf. John 13:35-36). May we see ourselves (and teach our children to see themselves)  as ambassadors for Christ, imploring other’s on Christ’s behalf to be reconciled to God (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:20).  That will be our way of “praising God and having the goodwill of all the people” (Acts 2:47). 


A Pentecost prayer:

God of all the nations, we pray for your one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. Praise to you for the great diversity present in the peoples, languages, rituals and practices of all people who follow you in the name of Jesus Christ. Turn us from fear of difference toward celebration. We pray for all people globally. Through the Spirit, grant us the power to be your disciples in the world. In our worship and in our work in the world, guide us to be good neighbors to our neighbors near and far. Free us from prejudice, that we may see your face in people around the world, through Jesus Christ, our Savior, and share his peace with all. (Adapted from Celebrate Global Ministries, Pentecost Sunday, 2017)

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Scripture quotations, except where otherwise indicated, are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Posted by David Sellnow
06
Feb
2022

Keep fishing

for the 5th Sunday after Epiphany
David Sellnow

Christ calls us to reach out to others, even when it seems an impossible task

If you are a church member, you recently became part of a minority in America. For the first time, the percentage of Americans who belong to a church or synagogue or mosque fell below 50%.  When Gallup did its first poll about church membership in 1937, 73% of Americans said they belonged to a church. That number remained consistently around 70% up to 1999. Since then, the numbers have dropped precipitously, down to 60% by 2010, down to 47% as of 2020. (1)  Meanwhile, the percentage of Americans who do not identify with any religion has grown from 8% in 2000 to 13% in 2010 to 21% by 2020.  In the United States overall, persons who attend church regularly represent 24% of the population, compared to 29% who never attend religious services at all. (2)

In broader terms, you’re not a minority yet, but your majority status is shrinking. Apart from church membership or attendance, how do people see themselves? Fifteen years ago, for every person in this country saying they were non-religious, there were five persons who professed to be Christians. Today, for each non-religious person, there are maybe two Christians as their neighbors in the community. (3)

Jacopo Bassano, The Miraculous Draught of Fishes, National Gallery of Art, via Wikimedia Commons

I hope such news doesn’t make you uncomfortable. I hope, rather, that it makes you feel like going fishing. I don’t mean giving up on your religious life and spending all your time at the lake. Quite the opposite—I mean that we devote ourselves to living the faith in the way Jesus called us to be “fishers” of men and women. We learn something about our calling from way Jesus called his first disciples–fishermen by trade–to come follow him (cf. Luke 5:1-11). After a long night out on the lake, catching nothing, Jesus told Simon Peter and his colleagues to go out again and let down their nets–in deep water and in broad daylight.  This was not how Galilean fishermen approached their work.  They used trammel nets near the surface. In deep water, the fish would typically not be within their reach. (4)  Also, until the introduction of transparent nylon nets in the 20th century, “trammel net fishing was done only at night. In the daytime, the fish could see the nets and avoid them.” (5)

So, when the fishing partners caught so many fish that their nets began to break (Luke 5:6), with loads of fish so heavy they barely could keep their boats afloat, this clearly was a miracle of Jesus’ doing. It also was an object lesson in what “fishing” is like for us in a spiritual sense. Fishing isn’t easy. It takes great patience and persistence. Sometimes you can fish and fish and fish and catch nothing. Sometimes the fish just aren’t biting, no matter what lure or bait or method you’re using. Bringing others into the family of Jesus is like that. You can do outreach effort after outreach effort, and nobody seems to respond. You try every traditional method you know to do ministry and evangelism, but people from the community aren’t interested. On that day at Lake Gennesaret, it took a miracle by Jesus to bring fish into the nets of Peter and the other fishermen. On any day that we seek to bring a person’s soul into the arms of our Savior, it takes a miracle of God’s Spirit to make that change happen.  After all, “no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3).

Perhaps many decades of cultural dominance by Christianity in America have made us think ministry should be easy. Historically and globally, that has not been the usual situation for witnesses of the gospel. In the present day, the world watch list details the fifty countries around the world where being a Christian is the most difficult and dangerous. Relatively speaking, here in the United States, while things are changing for us, we still have a much easier path for faith and ministry.  Back in the first years of the Christian mission, times were enormously challenging. Persecution and opposition were common. For the most part, the apostles died as martyrs for the faith. (6) The early Christians had no church buildings or public presence. They met together in each other’s homes. They met wherever they could meet, sometimes in secret. They encouraged each other, but they were going against the flow of the society around them.

It was during those same years, though, that the Christian faith grew exponentially.  One prominent sociologist has estimated that during the 300 years following Jesus’ death and resurrection, the number of Christians increased by about 40% per decade–continuing at that rate decade after decade until the Christian church came to be dominant in the Mediterranean world. (7)  What enabled the early Christians to have such a steady, growing influence on the people around them, so that people wanted to know more about them and more and more people began to join with them?  

One thing those early Christians had was a powerful story that they shared, “a better story than their neighbors. … Christians told their neighbors a story about a big God who was deeply good and who loved human beings … who out of love for humanity, stepped down into humanity to lift human beings up to himself.” (8) That story transforms the way we live our lives. Let me share an example. Some years ago, there was a woman in my congregation in Texas, just a regular person, someone like you. At her workplace, there was another woman, a single mom, who was struggling to get through the day most days. The women frequently took breaks and lunchtime together and talked about life. One day, the younger woman said to her older friend, “How do you do it? You seem to have such a sense of calm about you. Somehow you always are pleasant, even when I keep dumping my problems on you because I’m so tired and stressed and frustrated. What’s your secret? Where do you get your strength?”  

Image via depositphotos.com

“Oh, dear,” her friend replied, “I don’t feel like I’m all that well put together. I have plenty of days when I’m frazzled and at my wits end. But the thing that gets me through is faith. I just keep hanging onto Jesus, because I know that when I am weak, he is strong. I go to church to get strengthened, because I need the comfort and forgiveness and encouragement I get there.”

The two hadn’t talked about faith before, but they began to talk about faith and the gospel quite a bit from that day on. That’s how relationships of faith begin. You have the same strength of faith at work in your hearts and lives, the power that God “put to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead” (Ephesians 1:19,20). Our lives have been resurrected with Christ–already now in the hope that we have, and knowing that through the resurrection that is to come, “we will be with the Lord forever” (1 Thessalonians 4:17,18). So we encourage one another with these words, and we can encourage our friends and neighbors too.

When the early church was constantly growing and influencing people, “people were drawn into Christianity because of an experience of the resurrected Jesus.” (9) The knowledge and confidence and joy of the resurrection radiated in people’s lives. Remember why it was that Christians chose Sunday as their day for gathering to commune together.  If anyone ever asks you, “Why do you go to church on Sundays?” you have a powerful answer.  Every Sunday is a reminder that Jesus came back from the dead, alive again.  That miraculous truth is the center of our hope as Christians. We “know Christ and the power of his resurrection” (Philippians 3:10). “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, he was buried, and he was raised on the third day” (1 Corinthians 15:3,4). That truth is of primary importance, for if  Christ did not rise from death, our faith would be futile and meaningless (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:17). “But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. … God gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:20, 57).  So, as believers of that truth, we can be “steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord,” because we know that in the Lord our labor is not in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58). 

You may feel like laboring for the Lord is too much for you, like the call to be an evangelist is too hard a thing to do.  You’re in good company if you feel that way. Every faithful servant called to go and speak for God has had similar misgivings. Moses said, “O my Lord, I have never been eloquent  … I am slow of speech and slow of tongue” (Exodus 4:10).  When Isaiah was called, he said, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips” (Isaiah 6:6). When Jesus filled Peter’s nets, preparing to send him as someone who would fish for people, Peter said, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:8).  When Paul was called by Jesus, he was stunned and for three days didn’t eat or drink anything (Acts 9:9).  So if you don’t feel up to the task, that’s understandable. But remember what God showed Isaiah. His mercy had touched Isaiah’s lips. All Isaiah’s guilt was gone, all sins and shortcomings forgiven (Isaiah 6:7).  Paul felt that he was unfit to be called an apostle, because he previously had persecuted the church of God. “But by the grace of God I am what I am,” Paul said. He realized that God’s grace toward him was given to him for a reason (1 Corinthians 15:9,10).  God’s grace has been given to you for a reason too. Each of you has a story to tell. You have a message to share.

Maybe, though, you feel like your opportunities to reach out are limited. Around the region where I live, there are many rural churches facing declining numbers in both congregation and in community. When we think of our congregations in rural America, the weaknesses and challenges tend to be the only things we see.  But one ministry advisor has focused on a key strength of small congregations in small communities.  ““People in rural churches share common experiences,” he said. “That’s certainly a strength of these churches. [They understand that] people are more important than programs. …  Relationships are key. Everything in a small church, a rural church, revolves around relationships.” (10)  I might add that relationships are key for all Christian congregations, in urban and suburban settings too.

Perhaps in the past we’ve had the mindset about our churches that if we have a building, they will come. If we have church services, they will come. If we have programs and activities, they will come.  But that’s not generally true.  The mission of the church is not to figure out what strategies to use to get people to come. Rather, our mission is to see what opportunities exist for us to go into all the world and speak the good news to every person (Mark 16:15).  That doesn’t mean buttonholing everyone you meet and saying, “Are you saved? If you were to die tonight, where would you be?” Conversations don’t start that way. Relationships built on trust don’t start that way. The strength of your witness for Jesus is in how you relate to others, human person to human person–like the story I shared about the woman and her work friend in Texas. It’s about how you extend hope and healing and heartfelt caring to people in daily life. The first followers of Jesus “initiated the largest movement in the history of the world, and they did it without an invite card.” (11) They didn’t even have church buildings to invite people to. You can share the faith simply by a willingness to live in faith and talk about your faith.

So, keep fishing. Keep putting your nets out in the water in the community around you. Drop a line to someone you know who needs good news. Christ calls us to reach out to others, even when it seems an impossible task. Jesus also promises to work miracles of his Spirit as we do what he calls us to do, just as he demonstrated that he could bring all sorts of fish into the boats that day on the Sea of Galilee. Keep fishing, my friends … knowing that when Jesus told us to go and make disciples of all nations, in the very next breath he said, “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). He is with you, and you will be his witnesses (Acts 1:8). 

(1) Jeffrey Jones, “U.S. Church Membership Falls Below Majority for First Time,” Gallup, March 29, 2021.

(2) Church Attendance of Americans 2020,” Statista, January 15, 2021.

(3) Gregory A. Smith, “About Three-in-Ten U.S. Adults Are Now Religiously Unaffiliated,” Pew Research Center, December 14, 2021.

(4) Cf. “Fishers of Fish,” by Gary M. Burge, Christian History Institute.

(5) David Bivin, “Miracle on the Sea of Galilee,” En Gedi Resource Center, June 14, 2019.

(6)  Cf. Ken Curtis, PhD., “Whatever Happened to the Twelve Apostles,” Christianity.com, April 28, 2010.

(7) Cf. The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History, by Rodney Stark, PhD, Princeton University Press, 1996. Review available in the American Journal of Sociology, January 1997.

(8) Cabe Matthews, “Evangelism in the Early Church and Today,” Firebrand, October 21, 2021.

(9) Cabe Matthews, “Evangelism in the Early Church and Today,” Firebrand, October 21, 2021.

(10) Dennis Bickers, quoted in “Rural Churches Struggle as Resources Flow to Urban Churches,” by Brian Kaylor, Center for Congregational Health, HealthyChurch.org.

(11) Preston Ulmer, “Stop Inviting People to Church,” Relevant, August 5, 2021.

Scripture quotations, except where otherwise indicated, are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Posted by David Sellnow
30
Sep
2021

No place to lay their heads

Grateful for our homes, we will help those who are homeless


If you close your ear to the cry of the poor, you will cry out and not be heard. – Proverbs 21:13


I visited Portland, Oregon in mid-summer. The weather was pleasant while we were there, with daytime highs in the mid-70s, a bit below their normal average for the time of year. Prior to our visit, however, Portland had endured a record-setting heatwave with temperatures as high as 117 degrees, and thermometers climbed back into the 90s and above 100 degrees soon after our trip. During the heat of late June, the Oregon Medical Examiner’s office reported 96 deaths statewide from hyperthermia, 60 of those in Portland. Many of the deaths were older persons living alone with no air conditioning. Additionally, county leaders in the Portland metropolitan area and elsewhere in Oregon confirmed that a significant number of persons who died due to the excessive heat were homeless or inadequately housed.  Portland is one of many American cities with high rates of homelessness.  Globally, the United Nations estimates that “1.6 billion people worldwide live in inadequate housing conditions, with about 15 million forcefully evicted each year.”

I realize how fortunate I am to have a home. I may wish I had more equity in the house that I am slowly purchasing. I wish I could afford improvements and additions to the property which are beyond my means or would press my budget. But those are problems of privilege, not the crisis-level concerns of those at risk of losing their housing.  In the United States today, an estimated 2.6 million tenants are facing eviction if they don’t receive aid. Due to the pandemic, the federal government authorized a $46.5 billion eviction prevention program, but to date (eight months after Congress approved the funds), less than 17% of the rental aid has been distributed. Congress also authorized $10 billion to help the more than 2 million homeowners who have fallen behind on their mortgages, but that program also has been agonizingly slow in responding to the needs that exist. In August, the federal moratorium against evictions was ended by the Supreme Court, which means the risk of more people losing their housing has increased. A state order against evictions ends today in California, which already has more homeless persons than any other state, including nearly half of the nation’s unsheltered homeless (living in tent encampments, in cars, in abandoned buildings, on the sidewalk, etc).

We may contemplate renovating our homes, upgrading to bigger or better homes, purchasing a vacation home in addition to our homestead property. Having a sizeable amount of earthly possessions is not inherently wrong; we remember that God blessed faithful forefathers such as Job and Abraham with great wealth (cf. Job 1:3, Genesis 12:1-2). However, we do well to heed also the prophet Isaiah’s warning to God’s people, that “God expected justice” but instead heard cries of injustice (Isaiah 5:7), admonishing those “who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one but you” (Isaiah 5:8). We recall also Jesus’ parable of the rich man who planned to build bigger barns to store all his excess goods. God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” (Luke 12:20). Jesus reminds us, “One’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions” (Luke 12:15). 

Our days on this planet are not permanent. We are called to see ourselves as “strangers and foreigners on the earth” who are “seeking a homeland … a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Hebrews 11:13-16). We are also called to live in community with one another as we sojourn here. In the eyes of God, an acceptable “fast” (reducing our own consumption) is “to loose the bonds of injustice … to let the oppressed go free … to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin” (Isaiah 58:6,7).

When Jesus came down and “pitched his tent among us” (John 1:14, literal translation), living our experience on this earth, he said to those who would follow him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Luke 9:58).  Surely, our Savior has empathy toward those who have no home. Christ seeks to provide us all a home in his heavenly mansions. In the meantime, until we reach that heavenly home, let’s strive to help one another and all of our neighbors have a safe place to be in this world.

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I’ll link here several highly-rated charitable organizations aiming to reduce homelessness. There are many more you likely can find in your own area.

Transition Projects

  • Over 50 years of helping deliver life-saving and life-changing assistance to some of Portland’s most vulnerable residents
  • 100 out of 100 rating on Charity Navigator

Minnesota Assistance Council for Veterans (MACV)

The People Concern

  • Los Angeles area organization seeking to empower homeless persons to be housed, healthy and safe and to become active participants in the community
  • 100 out of 100 rating on Charity Navigator

HomeAid America

New Story

National Alliance to End Homelessness

Religious statement:  “Homelessness: A Renewal of Commitment” (ELCA, 1990)

Scripture quotations, except where indicated otherwise, are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Posted by David Sellnow
28
Mar
2021

Cheering on Sunday, Jeering by Friday

On what has become known as Palm Sunday, in the Holy Land two millennia ago, the great crowd that had come for the Passover festival “heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting,’Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord–the King of Israel!’”  The religious leaders in the city said to one another, “Look, the world has gone after him!” (John 12:12-13,19).

Early in the morning on Friday of that same week, “all the chief priests and the elders of the people conferred together against Jesus in order to bring about his death.  They bound him, led him away, and handed him over to Pilate the governor. … Now at the festival, the governor was accustomed to release a prisoner for the crowd, anyone whom they wanted. At that time they had a notorious prisoner, called Jesus Barabbas. So after they had gathered, Pilate said to them, ‘Whom do you want me to release for you, Jesus Barabbas or Jesus who is called the Messiah?’ For he realized that it was out of jealousy that they had handed him over.  … The chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowds to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus killed. The governor again said to them, ‘Which of the two do you want me to release for you?’ And they said, ‘Barabbas.’ Pilate said to them, ‘Then what should I do with Jesus who is called the Messiah?’ All of them said, ‘Let him be crucified!’” (Matthew 27:1-2,15-18,20-22).


More than a Fair-Weather Friend

by David Sellnow

When you look at the events of Holy Week, you quickly see that there were fair-weather friends of Jesus in Jerusalem. They had heard about Jesus’ miracles, including the amazing act of raising a man named Lazarus from death (cf. John 11). Lazarus and his sisters lived just outside Jerusalem in the town of Bethany, and they were dear friends of his. The people who cheered Jesus as he came from Bethany into Jerusalem wanted so badly to be Jesus’ friends. They were fans. To them, he was a pop hero. They would have made him their king if they could. They hoped he could fulfill all their dreams, rescue their country from the Romans, put bread on their tables, miraculously heal all their diseases, and more. But they discovered that Jesus did not intend to be the type of messiah they wished for. He would not make earthly life a paradise. Instead, he sat and talked during that week about the kingdom of heaven and the end of the world and the judgment of God and spiritual truth. Most people turned away from him and ultimately turned against him.  They fell in line with the religious establishment’s rejection of Jesus, and by week’s end were shouting, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”  They became so vehement in their anger against Jesus that they were willing to call down curses on themselves in demanding his death. “His blood be on us and on our children!” the people as a whole said to the governor who held Jesus’ fate in his hands (Matthew 27:25).

The Palm Sunday cheering crowd became a dramatic example of fair-weather friends of Jesus. They had looked to Jesus primarily for what they could get from him. When they weren’t satisfied, they wanted to get rid of him. 

There were other friends of Jesus who did not turn against him, but they did turn away from him for a time. Jesus’ closest friends, his inner circle of disciples, proved to be fair-weather friends when the storm of opposition hit. Judas, one of them, became an outright enemy and betrayer. The other eleven, in fear, ran away when Jesus was arrested. They struggled to follow and stand with Jesus in the way the proverb had described: “A friend loves at all times, and kinsfolk are born to share adversity” (Proverbs 17:17). 

Thinking of friends in adversity, there’s a caution to note in that regard too. People can fall into a pattern of being only foul-weather friends of Jesus too. What I mean is that sometimes a person calls out to Jesus in times of trouble and distress, and then forgets about him when the crisis is gone. Think, for instance, of the ten lepers whom Jesus met along the border between Samaria and Galilee. All ten of them cried out to him in their sickness, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” (Luke 17:13). And Jesus had mercy; he healed them of their disease. But only one came back to offer Jesus thanks. You might say the other nine were “foul-weather friends” of Jesus. When they had a problem, they prayed and prayed, but when the problem was gone, they went on about their business with Jesus out of sight and out of mind.

There are still fair-weather and foul-weather friends of Jesus today. Some neglect him or ignore him. Some turn on him. Some who are now Jesus’ most vocal enemies were once his believing friends. Why do persons turn away from God and become enemies of the gospel? Maybe their hearts become hard or their desires worldly. Maybe they didn’t get from God the answers they wanted and then stopped listening to his message.  

Have we ever been that way? Have we been fair-weather believers, trusting and following Jesus as long as things are good, then giving up and trying to go it on our own when difficulties arise? Or have we been foul-weather friends, coming to Jesus in desperation when we have deep needs in our lives, but losing connection with him when the need is satisfied? 

Though we often may fall into patterns of only fair-weather or only foul-weather friendship toward Jesus, the good news is that he is constant in his commitment and friendship toward us. He is a Savior for all seasons, whether the weather of our lives is fair or foul. When times are good, it is he who is blessing us. When times are frightening, he is the one who gives us hope and security. More than anyone else, Jesus epitomizes what a true friend is and does. “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” Jesus himself said (John 15:13), and then he did exactly that. 

Jesus also said to his friends, his disciples (and to us): “You are my friends if you do what I command you” (John 15:14). He calls us to be the kind of friends to one another and to all persons that he has been to us. 

Jesus’ commitment to humanity was so strong that he weathered all possible scorn and abuse and rejection by the very people he came to serve and save. He was abandoned by those closest to him and suffered a death of isolation under the judgment of heaven itself. He did all this to reclaim us as his friends, to redeem us from our fickle and faithless ways. He promises that even “if we are faithless, he remains faithful” (2 Timothy 2:13). 

God grant that the redeeming work Jesus carried out for us, which we remember during this Holy Week, move our hearts to a deep and lasting relationship with him as our Lord and dearest friend — not just in fair weather or foul, but every day in every way.

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Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Posted by David Sellnow
18
Jan
2021

Thoughts for Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Reject racism; God shows no partiality

On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC (8/28/1963), the Rev. Dr. Martin  Luther King, Jr., famously said, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” He dreamed that one day the United States would be a nation where individuals would “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”  

Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking at University of Minnesota, Saint Paul campus, 1967 – Wikimedia Commons

Recent events reveal a distance still to go before King’s dream can be realized. Instances of propaganda and recruitment to white nationalist organizations have shown a more than fivefold rate of increase over the past two years.  The rate of death from COVID-19 for Native Americans has been 73% higher than for white Americans, and 40% higher for black Americans than white Americans.  What Dr. King said at a meeting of the Medical Committee for Human Rights (3/25/1966), sadly, still rings true today:  “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhuman because it often results in physical death” (Associated Press, 3/26/1966).

A dozen days ago, a self-proclaimed “shaman” stood at the rostrum of the Speaker of the House of Representatives in the US Capitol (after invading that space). He invoked the name of Jesus Christ and led a prayer of sorts, thanking God for “allowing the United States of America to be reborn” and “for allowing us to get rid of the traitors within our government.”  In response to such a misuse of Christ’s name, it seems fitting to gather together things spoken in Scripture and by recognized religious leaders about our call to work for peace and kinship among all human beings–children of God “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Revelation 7:9).   In King’s words, may we “speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last.”

Bible statements

  • “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.”  – The Apostle Peter  (Acts 10:34,35)
  • “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”  – The Apostle Paul  (Galatians 3:28)
  • “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself.” – God’s word revealed to Moses (Leviticus 19:33,34)
  • “You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.” – James, leader in 1st century Jerusalem church  (James 2:8-9) 

Statements by religious leaders

  • “Discrimination based on the accidental fact of race or color, and as such injurious to human rights regardless of personal qualities or achievements, cannot be reconciled with the truth that God has created all men with equal rights and equal dignity.” – United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Discrimination and Christian Conscience (11/14/1958)
  • “Racism—a mix of power, privilege, and prejudice—is sin, a violation of God’s intention for humanity. The resulting racial, ethnic, or cultural barriers deny the truth that all people are God’s creatures and, therefore, persons of dignity. Racism fractures and fragments both church and society.” – Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Freed in Christ: Race, Ethnicity, and Culture (8/31/1993)
  • “I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. … I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Prize acceptance speech (12/10/1964)
  • “Racism can ultimately never be benign, nice and respectable.  It is always evil, immoral and ultimately vicious and not to be tolerated by Christians and people of goodwill as well as those of other faiths. … Racism claims that what invests us, each person, with worth is some extraneous arbitrary biological or other attribute, skin colour or ethnicity. … The Bible and Christianity teach a categorically different position.  What endows the human person with worth is not this or that attribute.  No, it is the fact that each person is created in the image and likeness of God.  This is something that is so for every single human being. … It does not depend on status, on gender, on race, on culture.  It does not matter whether you are beautiful or not so beautiful, whether you are rich or poor, educated or uneducated.  … Reconciliation [of all people] is really the heart of the Gospel message.  Therefore to say that people are fundamentally irreconcilable is to deny … the central tenet of Christianity.  Jesus said of himself, ‘I, if I be lifted up, will draw all to me’” (John 12:32). – Archbishop Desmond Tutu, speech to the Parliament of Australia (12/6/1994)


To see additional thoughts here on The Electric Gospel that speak against favoritism and prejudice, go to the following link and scroll through previous posts on the topic:

https://theelectricgospel.com/tag/favoritism/

 

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Posted by David Sellnow
04
Jul
2020

Mortal Monuments

by David Sellnow

“All flesh is grass” (Isaiah 40:6 KJV).

Statues are falling across the land. They are being removed, destroyed, defaced.

In Richmond, Virginia, the bronze image of Christopher Columbus was torn down, set on fire, then shoved into a nearby lake.  

In Minneapolis, outside Target Field, the Minnesota Twins removed a statue of former team owner Calvin Griffith, acknowledging racism he had exhibited. 

Image credit: Wikipedia Commons

In New York City, the American Museum of Natural History has requested that the city remove the Equestrian Statue of Theodore Roosevelt, which depicts the former US president riding high while leading an African American and Native American man on each side of his horse.

In Portland, Oregon, outside Jefferson High School, protesters spray painted “SLAVE OWNER” across the base of the Thomas Jefferson memorial and toppled the statue itself onto the ground.

The killing of George Floyd by police officers on Memorial Day has pushed our nation to reevaluate its past and what we memorialize. Monuments to Confederate generals who fought to perpetuate slavery have been targeted especially. Other figures have been questioned and their history reassessed too, such as the examples mentioned above.

The history of each individual human life is complicated. Thomas Jefferson owned more than 600 slaves over the course of his lifetime. Jefferson also fathered children by one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, who was his wife Martha’s half-sister.  (Martha Jefferson’s father also had fathered children by a family slave.)  However, in the draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson included strong condemnation of the slave trade that the British government had made a part of colonial life.  He blamed the king for waging “cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery or to incur miserable death in their transportation” from Africa to the Americas. That portion of Jefferson’s Declaration didn’t make it into the final version of the nation’s founding document. Too many other leaders, too invested in the slave economy, forced such statements to be deleted.

Any human beings whom we hold up as heroes are inevitably flawed because, well, they’re human. Some have engaged in actions that were hailed as bold in their time but are seen as oppressive in retrospect. Statues fall. No mortal man or woman in reality could be as monumental as the monuments we construct to them. Our tendency to elevate human individuals to hero status and idolize them is a pattern fraught with problems.

God’s Word wisely advises us (Psalm 146:3-4):
Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save.
When their spirit departs, they return to the ground;
on that very day their plans come to nothing.

The same Psalm (146:5-9) then tells us where to focus our trust:
Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the Lord their God.
He is the Maker of heaven and earth,
the sea, and everything in them—
he remains faithful forever.
He upholds the cause of the oppressed
and gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets prisoners free,
the Lord gives sight to the blind,
the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down,
the Lord loves the righteous.
The Lord watches over the foreigner
and sustains the fatherless and the widow.

God alone is worthy of our worship and praise. He is the one who can guide our paths forward, heal our society, inspire individuals to love one another regardless of race or other differences.

As for people from our past and people in our present, we do well to be honest about who they were and who they are — and to be honest about ourselves too, acknowledging our own failures and imperfections. The Bible is honest in that way about people whom we admire as persons “commended for their faith” (Hebrews 11:39). In Scripture, we hear not only that Noah believed God and built an ark for facing the Flood, but also of an occasion when he got so drunk he passed out. We hear not only of the times Abraham acted in great faith, but also times he was afraid and lied to protect himself. We hear not only of David’s great victories as leader of the people, but also of adultery and murder he committed. 

Isaiah’s prophetic words still ring out about our human condition.  No persons are pure, and no monuments to human achievement can ever be permanent.

 All people are like grass,
and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field.
The grass withers and the flowers fall,
because the breath of the Lord blows on them.
Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of our God endures forever  (Isaiah 40:6-8).


THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Posted by David Sellnow