Recently here on EDN, Robert Cornwall had an excellent article on the need to study history. On that point I completely agree. That said, I thought the view of history in the article he recommended was a bit binary and one sided. To be sure, there is a lot of truth in the description of Confederate monuments being linked to the “the Lost Cause” and when I was younger (i.e., the 1960s and 70s) it was still not all that uncommon to hear at least some of the older southerners refer to “the war of northern aggression.”
While there have been some attempts to remove the issue of slavery from the Civil War, instead trying to find some sort of economic justification, ultimately those attempts have failed. Whatever other factors may have been involved, they were clearly secondary. If one could somehow erase the issue of slavery from the early history of the United States, there would have been no Civil War.
Granted, in the early part of the war, many in the North were focused mainly on preserving the Union. Any such pretext was removed with the Emancipation Proclamation, and in the latter half of the war both sides fought over slavery, the South to preserve it and the North to end it.
Slavery, the original sin of the country, ran deep, dividing the it from its earliest days. It stained the Constitution, dragging it away of the goals of the Declaration of Independence where “all men are created equal” into a 3/5 compromise. It repeatedly plagued the early years of the country as a cancer eating away at its victim. Periodically, it would bubble to the surface, resulting in yet more compromises.
While the Democratic Party was mostly pro-slavery, the Whig party was split between those who wanted to restrict or even end slavery, and those who were willing to accommodate it or did not care. As the abolitionist movement grew, this split among the Whigs eventually destroyed the party and out of its destruction emerged the clearly anti-slavery Republican Party. With the election of the first Republican President, Lincoln, the South, fearing what the anti-slavery Republicans would do, started the Civil War.
The war ended, but the stain remained. While Republicans moved more towards the idea of the Declaration, Democrats continued to view issues through the lens of race. As Republicans began to lose political control of the South, the Democrats began to impose another form of racism: Segregation, which sadly would last until the 100th anniversary of the Civil war. While there are some notable Democratic exceptions, as there were for Republicans as well, for the most part the Democrats were the party of race, first supporting slavery, then of segregation, and the KKK was the base of many Democratic politicians who were often members themselves.
I was recently asked by a young software developer how is it that this was turned on its head? I answered that in many respects it really hasn’t. Democrats still tend to see everything through the eyes of race while Republicans are still the party where the color of one’s skin just is not that important; what matters is what one does and believes.
For many Democrats the focus on races and dividing people into groups is so strong that they have a hard time accepting that Republicans really do not care about skin pigmentation. Instead they take the resistance to dividing people into groups as itself a form of racism, and then create myths such as the southern strategy to project their former evils unto their political opponents.
Yet a Republican can, as many did, oppose Obama and yet enthusiastically support Ben Carson because of their policies and positions not their skin color. For Democrats, Republican opposition to Obama is frequently portrayed as racism, and the explanations for Carson, when offered, range from the incoherent to the disgusting (i.e., portraying Carson as an Uncle Tom).
So where do I come down on Confederate monuments? While, my mother was from North Carolina, my Dad was from Wyoming and I grew up as an Air Force brat, an Air Force that had been desegregated by Harry Truman, a Democrat, seven years before I was born. Most of my memories as a child come from Pennsylvania and California. I now live in Wisconsin. So I am basically a northern Republican and do not view the Civil War as a lost cause or a war of Northern aggression. After all, the South started it by firing on Fort Sumter. I view the Civil War as two things: A Victory, and Over.
Something common among the military, but not always understood by civilians, is the way that true warriors can fight so hard during a war, but then see those on “the other side” as fellow warriors after the war is over, even getting together to commemorate those fallen in battle. Thus, I can read a book like Rod Gragg’s “Covered with Glory: the 26th North Carolina Infantry at the Battle of Gettysburg” and not be rooting for my side to win and them to lose, but instead seeking an understanding of what they went through and suffered.
Towards the end of the first day of fighting, a federal solder, Corporal Charles H McConnell of the 24th Michigan was falling back. He took his last bullet, and aiming at a large man in gray 30 yards away, pulled the trigger. The large man was Colonel John R Lane, of the 26th North Carolina. The bullet hit Lane in the back of the neck exiting out through his teeth. It was a horrendous wound that nearly killed him. Yet 40 years later, at the anniversary of battle, Lane and McConnell met again and became friends. How is this possible?
Ultimately, it is because warriors realize, better than most, that in war those on both sides are caught up in something larger than themselves. Once the conflict is settled, it is time to move on and turn swords into plowshares. I can admire as tragic figures “those on the other side” like Lee and Stonewall Jackson. I can get a glimpse of the internal struggle that some faced as they came up against good friends in battle like Armistead and Harrison at Gettysburg. In short, I see them as people who suffered, and not part of an issue to be fought over.
In this light, when it comes to monuments in cemeteries or places like Gettysburg, I would be very strongly opposed to their removal. As for the others, I see them as much more problematic. I do believe that some of these celebrate the military tradition of the South, something that is much stronger than it is in the North, and it is a part of who they are, or at least were. Note that what is often called the Confederate flag was not actually the flag of the confederacy but a battle flag. Like it or not it is their history. But I can also understand the difficulty in separating this from the reason for which the war was fought, the preservation of the evil of slavery.
The love of history in me would hate to see their blanket removal as something akin to how Islamic radicals seek to purge the areas they conquer of any vestige of the things they oppose. Ultimately, I wish those involved would learn to be more like Lane and McConnell and I wish we could look back on the Civil War as a tragedy which engulfed the nation, caused by our compromise with the evil of slavery.
Frankly it should be much easier for us than it was for Lane and McConnell, after all no one alive today actually fought in the Civil War. Maybe a solution is that, rather than remove the Civil War monuments, we should focus on the positive endeavor of building more monuments to those who fought so hard to end the legacy of segregation in the Civil Rights movement. Elgin Hushbeck, Jr., Engineer, teacher, Christian apologist, and author of Preserving Democracy, What is Wrong with Social Justice?, A Short Critique of Climate Change, Christianity and Secularism, and Evidence for the Bible.
by Dr. Ronald Higdon, retired pastor and author of All I Need To Know I’m Still Learning at 80, In Changing Times: A Guide for Reflection and Conversation and Surviving a Son’s Suicide. We have so much trouble with the word grace because it is such a wild and unpredictable word. Defined as “God’s unmerited favor” it seems simple enough – until in the divine economy it is put into practice. The book of Jonah concludes with our hero sulking under a withered bush angry over God’s failing to unleash his wrath on the city of Nineveh. Jonah, by way of a great fish side trip, finally preached his mandated prophetic message of judgment and was taken aback by repentance on the part of the king and his people. God’s grace won the day and the city was spared. But Jonah knew they didn’t deserve to be spared. When Jesus tells the parable of the workers hired at various times throughout the day to work in a vineyard, all goes well until compensation is dispensed. Those who worked only one hour all receive a full day’s pay. Those who worked all day expected a bonus but each simply received the agreed upon daily wage. They were furious. Those who had worked so much less didn’t deserve what the owner had given them. The parable ends with the question: “Are you envious because I am so generous.” The parable of the Waiting Father (we usually call it the parable of the Prodigal Son) has the surprise ending of a O’Henry short story. The younger son is welcomed home with the full benefits of sonship restored. The older dutiful son confronts his father about how unjust this is. His brother does not deserve the party that has been thrown in honor of his return. The parable ends with the father pleading for the older son to join the festivities but he remains outside the door because he knows his wayward brother has not earned what he is receiving. We might summarize these biblical accounts as a violation of what deep down too many of us really believe: grace should not go to the wrong people. It should not go to people who do not deserve it. Of course, we have made the decision about who should be on the receiving end of God’s favor and forgiveness. We unconsciously have drawn boundaries around God’s grace and only include deserving people – like ourselves. The biblical stories we cited are all illustrations of grace gone too far. The irony of this kind of thinking is that it belies the very meaning of grace. Grace is that which cannot be merited, earned, bargained for, or deserved in any sense of the word. And it doesn’t belong to us, it belongs to God who seems determined to keep coloring outside the lines of our religious thinking. In his hometown of Nazareth, Jesus’ first (and perhaps only) sermon ended in a riot with the towns people attempting to throw Jesus off a cliff. His heresy? He made heroes of the wrong kind of people. In the life and ministry of Jesus, God’s grace had no restrictions and no limits. No one was every told, “It’s not for you. Your kind won’t fit into the Kingdom.” From the scandalous theological conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well to the unheard of boldness in inviting himself to be a guest in the home of the tax collector Zacchaeus, Jesus just never seemed to be able to find anyone who shouldn’t be graced. Jesus must never have heard of “hate the sin but love the sinner” because he never began any of his encounters with the “undeserving” by condemnation. Even in the disputed encounter with the woman taken in the act of adultery, his words to her were the first like it she had ever heard: “Neither do I condemn you.” It seems to be he came at “correction” through the avenue of acceptance and grace. Almost all surveys of “outsiders” about what words they would use to describe Christians usually begin with the word judgmental. They never associate that word with Jesus. He never appears to have been afraid that people would believe he was “soft on sin.” Too often that seems to be the fear of those who want to be careful about how far grace and acceptance go. Jesus seemed to have the opposite worry: that God’s people would be too judgmental, too exclusive, too certain about who was in and who was out, too certain that they were the special ones who were God’s chosen and they could spot the unchosen a mile away. I have always believed that what will make heaven truly heaven is that no one will believe for a moment they deserve to be there. All will confess they are there by the grace of God. It is easy to say an “amen” to All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and forget the important word all. None of us has any claim on God’s grace or forgiveness. They are his gifts to us for the receiving. And once they are received they are for the sharing. Everyone’s favorite verse, John 3:16, should spill over and include the rest of the thought in John 3:17: God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. To follow that model, we can never begin with condemnation or correction. Does a word of correction never come? It seems to me that all of Jesus’ encounters with those deemed as needing correction, always began with their being graced by his presence and by his words. From that grace came salvation and healing and redirection of life. We can never do the correcting we feel necessary in another’s life. (Think how difficult it is for us to deal with those things that need correcting in our own lives.) Grace is always the necessary environment in which people find the place to begin the changes they know they need to make. Those who were heavy on condemnation, judgment, and correction never receive commendation from Jesus. I believe that when we are the bearers and sharers of the grace we have received, we will discover that correction finds it proper time and place. We remember: grace can never go too far. We are grateful every day that it went far enough to include each of us – and that was pretty far.
Open up your English Bible and turn to Luke 23:34. Here’s how the verse reads in the Holman Christian Standard Bible: “And Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’” I’m curious if your translation has a footnote at the bottom of the page dealing with this particular verse. The RSV has a footnote at the bottom of the page that reads, “Other ancient authorities omit the sentence And Jesus . . . what they do.” The ESV has one that reads, “Some manuscripts omit the sentence And Jesus . . . what they do.” Or maybe your translation has the entire verse in brackets. That’s what the Holman Christian Standard Bible does, along with a note that reads, “Other mss omit the bracketed text.” Maybe this is the first time you’ve ever even noticed that note. It might be surprising, but believe me when I say it’s not that wild. Manuscripts before the age of the printing press and Xerox machines were copied by hand. As they were used, they got wore out. As they got wore out, new copies had to be made. There’s a least a question about whether or not Jesus really prayed for the forgiveness of those who were crucifying him. Some manuscripts record that he did, others leave this verse out. We have to wrestle with this when we study our New Testament. Before I give you some ways that you can think about this issue (and others like it) for yourselves, let me just point out some very important observations: Just because there are some footnotes about different manuscripts having different readings in our New Testament doesn’t mean our Bibles are full of errors or that we can’t trust our Bible. That’s simply not the case. What it means is there are some differences among the manuscripts. Before the age of Gutenberg and Xerox, all texts were written by hand. And as you can imagine, if you were copying a manuscript as long as some of these, there might be some issues that arose along the way. You might make a mistake, leave off a word or two, copy a word wrong, etc. This happened with the New Testament texts just like it happened with every single work that was kept and preserved for historical, literary, and cultural reasons. And somewhere along the way someone might have even thought they were doing the text a favor by inserting or removing something to make the text clearer or better fit with their own setting. It just happens. There are some differences in the manuscripts, but nothing that should really cast any doubt on whether we can trust our Bibles. So let me just point out a few types of data that factor in to what is called a textual analysis, that is, an analysis that attempts to ascertain the original wording of a specific New Testament passage when manuscripts containing that passage are not in total agreement. There are more than a few, but I’m just going to highlight a few here. The first consideration is the date of the manuscripts. The thinking goes as follows: It is reasonable to think that there is a higher probability that earlier manuscripts will contain the original reading. Why? Because the time span between original composition and an earlier copy of a manuscript is smaller than the time span of a later copy. That’s what we call a firm grasp of the obvious, and I’ve been complimented many times in my life for having one of those (though not always much more than that!). The more time between original composition, the more opportunity there is for a change to occur in the text. But we have to remember, an early copy is still not the original and as such there is always a possibility that a change to a passage could have occurred—intentionally or accidentally—while it was being copied. No copy, no matter how early it is, is entirely trustworthy. One of the things I am discussing in the forthcoming Energion book on textual criticism is how God inspired the original manuscript. The act of divine inspiration (2 Timothy 3:16) occurred with the original composition, not the act of copying the original. The second consideration is the geographical distribution of a particular reading. This one is a little more difficult to explain. The best way I can describe it here is to imagine a map that focuses on the Middle East with the Mediterranean Sea (just north of Libya) as the focal center. There were four regions of the world that produced manuscripts over the millennia and a half following the original composition of the New Testament texts. And these manuscripts are grouped into respective groups based on patterns for how they read in certain places. Those manuscripts are identified in the following ways: (1) Alexandrian, associated with Alexandria, Egypt in northern Africa; (2) Caesarean, associated with the land of Israel and its environs; (3) Byzantine, associated with churches in the Byzantine Empire; and (4) Western, associated with the Western Roman Empire. Now none of these are wholly trustworthy. In other words, we can’t just prefer one over the other. In fact, there are differences between some manuscripts even within the respective groupings. God didn’t inspire one particular group. The groups exist because of what happened as the texts of the New Testament were copied over the years. One thing that is important though is we want to consider if a particular reading is only found in one location, or whether a particular reading is found in all of them. I’ll explain this in just a second when we come back to Luke 23:34. A third consideration is the context of a passage. We have to ask things like, “Does this particular reading fit in this context?” Rest assured, the original reading is going to fit with the context. It’s going to match the author’s style. It’s not going to contradict anything else in the New Testament. It’s going to fit. And if it doesn’t, we should start asking ourselves what’s going on and taking a hard look at the evidence for the other reading. So what about Luke 23:34? Is this sentence original or not: “And Jesus was saying, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.’” We need to start by being able to explain what the issue is and why it matters for us? If we can’t explain why it matters for how we understand the passage, we’re not going to get anywhere. In this passage, it really matters. One of the reasons we read and study the Bible is because we want to know more about the one who gave his life for us on the cross. We want to know him, like Paul wrote in Philippians 3:10. We want to know who he is, how he acted, and what he cared about. We want to know how he suffered too, just like Peter pointed out in 1 Peter 2:21–25. Not only do we want to know more about the depths of his love and the incredibleness of his redemptive plan, we understand that we are being conformed into his image and, therefore, we want to know how he lived, so that we can begin to pursue a lifestyle that honors him and models for the world today the life he lived two millennia ago. This verse in Luke 23 is quite remarkable. If the verse is original, it sure tells us something amazing about Jesus: While he was being crucified, reviled, mocked, scorned etc., there was one thing on Jesus’ mind. The forgiveness of sins was the one thing that drove Jesus to the cross, the place where those he wanted to see forgiven would drive the nails into his hands and feet. In Luke 9:51 it says Jesus set his face like flint to go to Jerusalem. The cross was no accident (Matthew 16:21). He was going to Jerusalem so he could go to the cross. And he was going to cross so that those who believe in him could actually be treated as if they had never committed a single sin (2 Corinthians 5:21). Incredible. But unless anyone question his resolve to bring about this forgiveness—if this verse is original—well, this verse drives it home even more. Jesus wanted people to be forgiven. And by the way, just an important observation here, the text doesn’t say that Jesus prayed; it says “and he was praying,” suggesting he pled for this forgiveness at least twice, but maybe even more. But what if the text is not original? Do we lose anything theologically? Does our understanding that Jesus wanted people to have forgiveness of their sins hinge on the originality of this verse? Nope. Just see Matthew 9:2–6; Luke 7:44–48; etc. Okay. Here’s the thing though: I can’t make a decision about the originality of a verse based on whether or not it’ll “preach” really good, or whether I just like the idea that Jesus prayed for people while he was being crucified, or something like that. No, I have to make a decision based on the evidence, taking into consideration things like the date of manuscripts, the geographical distribution, and whether a reading fits with the context of the passage (and, remember, there are other factors to consider). In this case, the earliest manuscript we have containing this portion of the Gospel of Luke that does not include this verse is a papyrus manuscript. It dates around the 3rd century. And we’ve got five other manuscripts that date between the 4th and 6th centuries. So give one point to “not original.” What about geographical distribution? Guess what. That reading where the verse is omitted—the one with the earliest manuscripts—well, it is almost entirely restricted to a single geographical location, namely Alexandrian. That just seems really problematic. How would the verse make it into all these other geographical regions if it wasn’t original? In fact, two of the manuscripts that contain the verse are dated to the 5th century. That’s pretty early, isn’t it? And those two manuscripts are associated with two different geographical regions, one Alexandrian and the other Byzantine. So give one point to “original.” And then we think about the context. The Gospels all indicate that Jesus was speaking from the cross. He prayed to the Father, he coordinated that John would care for his mother, and he even promised one of the thieves that he would be with Jesus in paradise when he died (i.e., he was forgiven!). If you ask me, the verse is original. It’s not supported by the oldest manuscripts, but it is supported by two manuscripts associated with two different geographical locales copied prior to the sixth century. And it definitely doesn’t conflict with the rest of the crucifixion narrative or the life and ministry of Jesus in general. Just imagine Jesus praying for these people. Even in his darkest hour of his life, one thing mattered—forgiveness of sins. What a savior! So someone is going to ask me the following question so I better just go ahead and answer it: How did the verse become missing in those early manuscripts? Ultimately, I cannot know for certain. I can make an educated guess. Maybe it was because after the fall of Jerusalem it looked like Jesus’ prayer for their forgiveness wasn’t answered and some scribes decided to take it out versus it looking like Jesus could pray a prayer and it not be answered. Or maybe someone glanced over it, forgot to copy it, and from that point, in those Alexandrian manuscripts, the verse was removed. But for the rest of the world, they kept hearing Jesus pray this prayer for forgiveness. And hopefully it would have the same impact on them that it had on Stephen when he encountered the darkest day of his life and prayed the forgiveness of those who were putting him to death (Acts 7:60).
Sorrowing Old Man by Vincent Van GoghHow utterly disheartening it is when you are in the thick of serious questions and doubts to be told that you should not be questioning and doubting. If you’re in the middle of a storm, it’s no help to be told that you should not be there. What you then need is a helping hand, a sharing mind. And the more important the questions are to you, the more urgent will be your desire for clarity, proper consideration, and decision. When we were children we did not have to be taught to accept what our parents and teachers said. There was no other alternative but to accept. They were there first. But we grow up and we learn more than we knew as children. We begin to have the problem of sorting out the answers we learned and even the questions we should now be asking. This produces more questions and, most likely, confusion and frustration. No one who thinks at all gets through this stage of life without doubting. At this stage, the people who think they know every answer, or worse still, every question, are the ones who may be able to help us the least. People who have gone through an experience similar to ours a long time ago, and who have now found working answers to their questions, may have forgotten how hard-won their conclusions and attitudes were. It’s easy once you’ve found a working answer to problems which were once important to us and forget or overlook the process of struggle that led up to our present positions. It is easy then to be unsympathetic. That happens when once has become very certain of the answer one has attained. There is, of course, a very different attitude. Having experienced a struggle, more or less intense, to achieve one’s present position, one can then reflect on that process. It becomes obvious on reflection that others who have achieved some certainty through the process of doubting have also had tensions, struggles, opposition. Realizing that is often the case, one may be ready to be sympathetic to them, and willing to give support and help as it is needed. Those who have not gone through what we go through in this period simply live in a different world from us, and speak to us in a language which does not connect. We hear the words and see the concern. We know their affection and appreciate it. Yet sometimes the very finality and placidity with which we are told what they believe what their new attitudes and positions are disarms us. Their position differs from ours and is considered unsatisfactory. It may even, if we are deeply troubled by dogmatism, lead us to reject not only the answer that but also the very quest in which we are participating. It may even lead top alienation. Fortunately sometimes respect and even affection can survive the emergence of drastic differences of belief. This is a gesture of despair, but quite an understandable one. To those who have difficulty finding people who will treat their questions seriously and with understanding, I say: ‘Do not be put off from the quest for truth and for life. Keep asking. Keep searching. And try, meanwhile, to be loving. If you don’ t appear to be understood, then turn the tables by trying, as far as possible, to be understanding.’ It might help if I made an explicit distinction for you to think about. It is one thing to ask questions about what faith means. It is another thing to give up the faith. Because you have questions about the faith does not mean at all that you are giving up the faith. Do not let anybody persuade you that it does. If you are alert you will have serious questions. If your faith is vital and healthy, it will give rise to inquiry, to careful thought, to examination of answers you did not question as a child. One of the emancipating discoveries you can make is that Christian faith is big enough to permit the believer to live with questions, and to go on living with questions. To some questions there simply is no intellectually satisfying answer. For example, I have yet to read an intellectually satisfying answer to the problem of suffering. Indeed I do not believe that one is possible. There will always be room to doubt the goodness of God. I believe that God is good. But my faith in God does not depend upon the answer to this problem being satisfying to my mind. This does not mean of course that I shouldn’t seek the very best explanation I can get. While to some questions there is no finally satisfying answer, there is an answer to the mystery of life–the answer of faith in Jesus as Lord. When Jesus is found, then the process of inquiry and of questioning is put into a context where it has both significance and direction. Life is not God’s reward for cleverness in solving problems. It is a gift he offers us because we need it. When we accept and live out of the grace he gives, joy is larger than frustration. How do you mark off what is beyond doubt from what you may doubt, and what you must doubt, what is indubitable from what may be doubted? Why do you not doubt if you feel you should? There is no virtue in resolving, ‘I will not doubt’. you maintain a belief because no alternative has yet been offered to you or come to your attention. You have asked questions and may be in the process of finding answers that provide you with satisfaction. Questioning is not doubting, but it is often a pathway that leads us to revise our understanding, to revise our beliefs. But you maintain a belief or set of beliefs because it is comfortable to be accepted by other believers. You may forget that life and understanding become richer as new perspectives emerge. But guidance is often needed even if it is not sought.
We have distinguished faith from belief. We distinguish ‘the faith’ from beliefs held with in its context. Because you have questions about the faith does not mean that you are giving up the faith. Do not let anybody persuade you that it does. If you are alert you will have serious questions. If your faith is vital and healthy, it will give rise to inquiry, to careful thought, to examination of answers you did not question as a child, or have not questioned since. One of the emancipating discoveries you can make is that Christian faith is big enough to permit the believer to live with questions, and to go on living with questions.
by Dr. William Powell Tuck, friarsfragment.com, retired pastor, professor and author of A Positive Word for Christian Lamenting, The Church Under the Cross, Overcoming Sermon Block, and more! Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:43-44 that we are to love our enemies seems not only difficult but, if we are honest, impossible to put into practice. How, for example, do persons who were freed from years of being imprisoned by terrorists, forgive their enemies? How do relatives, who stand before the Viet Nam Memorial in Washington, D.C., love the enemies who killed their relatives and friends? How do the millions of Jews who saw their husbands, wives, children or parents gassed, victimized and tortured in Nazi concentration camps, forgive them? How do the Japanese, who lived in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, forgive us for dropping the bomb on them? How do the relatives of those who were killed in the twin towers which collapsed from the crashed planes of the 9/11 attacks forgive those who were responsible for such an act?
A Difficult Saying
“Forgive your enemies,” sounded difficult in the day when Jesus first uttered it. He was addressing a people who were at that moment enslaved by the Romans. The tax collectors, their fellow Jews, were working with the Roman government to collect taxes from them. Jewish religious leaders often set up restrictions of the law which were so binding that no person who had any kind of ordinary job could possibly follow their rigid regulations.
Who are Our Enemies?
Enemies are easy to define in wartime. Let’s put wartime, terrorists, murderers, and rapists aside for a moment and bring our enemies closer to home. Who is our enemy? Our enemy is anybody who hates us or who wishes us harm or injury through word or deed. An enemy comes closer and takes on a familiar face when you see your enemy as someone who may cause you difficulty and turmoil in your job or makes your work miserable. Our enemy may be seen as someone who has caused us to go bankrupt, or smeared your name or hurt your reputation through gossip or slander, or anyone who has told a half-truth about you or sought to cause you harm. Or some one who makes fun of you, puts you down, or ridicules you. An enemy may be someone who has closed the door of communication, or some one who responds differently to you because she has misunderstood or misinterpreted something you said or did. All of us feel we experience some kind of enemy.
Why Should I Love My Enemy?
The more basic question seems to be: Why should I love my enemy? Why should we try to love somebody who wants to hurt us, hates us or cause us harm? If you respond to a person who dislikes you or hates you with the same attitude they are directing toward you, you will soon find that your life is poisoned within. Hatred is a self-destructive attitude. Jesus went so far as to say that the wells of anger and lust within determine our outward behavior.
We need to make a distinction between hating things and hating people. We tend to identify a person with the vicious, destructive or harmful behavior which he or she does. It is easy to hate a murderer, rapist, or terrorist. Instead let’s direct our indignation to the root cause behind the evil and not on the person who is committing the act of evil. We need to love the person and hate the evil. We need to overcome war, prostitution, prejudice, drugs and other enemies, but not by hating the persons involved in them.
Why should we love our enemy? We love our enemy because love is the only power which can change our enemy. Jesus was not interested in condemning a person but in saving them, making them whole. No prostitute was ever changed by treating her as a prostitute. No thief was ever changed by treating him as a thief. An enemy is not changed by treating him as an enemy. Love is the power which can convert an enemy into a friend. Why do we want to love? Because it is only in forgiving others that we are really forgiven ourselves. This is what Jesus taught us in the Lord’s Prayer. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us.” If you and I refuse to forgive others, we close the door to our own forgiveness by God.
Loving Does Not Mean We Have to Like Our Enemy
We begin to love our enemy by realizing that we don’t always have to like our enemy. There are things that our enemies do that we will never like. Who can like somebody that murders and rapes, robs and kills, or somebody who hurts us with words, or who victimizes us, or who is prejudiced against us? It is difficult to like these people. But we are told not to like them but to love them.
The word agape is different from a sentimental concept of love. Agape means that you deliberately direct your will to accomplish what is best for your enemies. This kind of love is not based on emotion or sentiment. When I loved my children by directing my will to recognize and motivate the best within them, there were times that I had to deny them what they wanted. At times I had to discipline them or put restraints on what they wanted to do. I had to correct or try to modify their behavior. I may not have liked what they did, but I continued to love my children. I also continue to love myself when I do some things that I don’t like. Real love does not say that it doesn’t make any difference what a person does. By an effort of my will–by loving them–I try to bring about change in their lives.
Don’t Identify a Person with his or her Sin
Another way to love my enemy is by not identifying the person with their sins. I make a distinction between my real self and what I do. I need to do the same for others. I have to see the potential within others. If I refuse, I will never give another a chance to change. Jesus looked at people and saw what they could be through grace and forgiveness. He saw Zacchaeus, a tax collector, who was one of the most despised persons of his day. Yet he saw the difference that could be in his life if he would follow him and change his life. He saw within the life of Mary Magdalene, a prostitute and an outcast of society, what she could become through transforming love. He saw within Saul, who was persecuting and executing Christians, a pioneering missionary.
This is what God does for us. We can learn to forgive our enemies when we begin to realize how often people do not really understand their own actions. Jesus prayed on the cross, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” The influence of friends, relatives, peer groups, community, social or national pressures, gangs or other pressures cause us to act the way we do. Sometimes, we do not really “know what we do.” But thank God we can break free from packs and their pressure and experience forgiveness and have the opportunity to start again. This Radical Forgiveness Identifies Us with God
Jesus told his disciples that if they learn to forgive their enemies they would be children of the most high (Luke 6:35). This kind of love reveals that we are like our Father. Even if we are like the prodigal son and go into the farthest country of sin, God will still forgive us when we say: “Father, I have sinned.” Out of love God extends grace that issues in our forgiveness.
This Is a Demanding Love
This kind of love is not easy. Its claim on our lives and attitude is demanding. The love that Jesus Christ models for us goes beyond anything many we can imagine. This love demands the forgiveness of others, the unwillingness to cling to grudges or harbor hatreds, and the goal of being “perfect” like God. Christ calls us to be unselfish, caring, patient, understanding, loving, and sacrificial. Jesus didn’t say his way was easy. Loving our enemies is difficult and hard to accept. But it is at the heart of our faith. This teaching makes us realize how far we are from following our Lord’s way.
by Ronald Higdon, retired pastor (including intentional interim ministry), adjunct professor, and author of In Changing Times: A Guide for Reflection and Conversationand Surviving a Son’s Suicide A reporter was interviewing an elderly Kentucky farmer and posed an obvious-answer question: “You’ve been farming for over sixty-five years; I bet you’ve seen a lot of changes in that period of time, haven’t you?” The farmer replied, “I certainly have. And I’ve been against every one of them.” This is not unlike the song sung by Groucho in an old Marx Brothers movie that has this recurring line: “I’m against it!” This is the theme song of many who see change as only danger and threat. I often quip that I have pastored some churches with the unstated but obvious philosophy: “Come weal or come woe, our status is quo.” The above examples keep one in the negative and “kickative” mode because change is the one constant in life that can always be counted on. It is one of the great inevitables written large in the universe. Only of God’s consistency in his grace, mercy, and love can it be said: “As it was in the beginning, so it is now, and so shall it ever be, world without end.” A friend was recently talking about some changes that are about to be made in the church of which we are members. Her comment was: “Nothing in my world has remained the same. It seems that everything I have loved and cherished is no more. I guess I had always assumed that at least I could count on my church remaining the same.” Books have been written on the impact of the not only increasing amount of change in our world but of the rapidity with which it has come. I told my friend who was lamenting the changes in her life, even in the church, that each day when I get up I look out the window to make certain I’m not living on another planet. Many have brought to our attention our basic dilemma: those of my generation were educated to live in another time and now we find ourselves living in this time. My seminary education was excellent but it certainly did not prepare me for ministry in the church-world of today. The reference has been lost but not the story of the Bishop who was meeting with a group of pastors and began his session with the announcement that he had good news and bad news for them. He asked them which they wanted first. After a brief pause, one of the pastors spoke up: “Give us the bad news first.” “It is more difficult to be in pastoral ministry today than in any other time I have known.” After a brief period of silence and heads nodding in approval, the request came: “What is the good news?” The Bishop smiled and confidently announced, “If the fifties ever come back, we’re ready!” The impossibility of this kind of “back to the future” does not have to be spelled out even though the attempt to live it out remains in evidence. We shouldn’t have to be told, “There are no trains to yesterday.” We know the intellectual truth of this, even though some continue to wait at the Nostalgia Station for the Express to the past. It’s not coming. The time is now. It is not the same as it was in the past and, when the future arrives it will be different than what we are experiencing but, of course, will not be called the future but the present, the now. This is the only time zone in which we can live and in this “new time” in order to live with purpose and hope I believe, that basically, we have to see the changes in our lives as challenges and opportunities. In 1980, William Bridges wrote a book titled Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes. He offered what I believe continues to be solid advice: “Whether your chose your change or not, there are unlived potentialities within you, interests and talents that you have not yet explored. Transitions clear the ground for new growth. They drop the curtain so the stage can be set for a new scene. What is it, at this point in your life, that is waiting quietly backstage for an entrance cue?” The challenge in this he spells out in one sentence: “To have a new beginning you need to acknowledge an ending.” Why is it so difficult for us to acknowledge that some things are simply over? Endings are usually never swift or easy and are hardly ever complete. I maintain that successful beginnings always depend on reasonably successful endings. The grief process in mourning our losses plays a large part in successful endings and varies greatly with the nature of the loss (ending) and the way we have dealt with previous losses. It is not always easy to view change as a time of transition and the opportunity for a new beginning. But that is what it is – if we are determined to be truly alive in the moment in which we are living. Just because something is difficult (and what worthwhile thing isn’t?) doesn’t mean it is not meant to be a part of our learning and growing in God’s world for this time. Who knows what fresh beginnings await us? A lot depends on how we handle the changes that will only keep coming.
Last night I had the privilege of chatting with Harvey Brown, Jr., author of the book Forgiveness: Finding Freedom from Your Past in the Topical Line Drives series.
One of the key lines, which I paraphrase, was when Harvey said that if a pastor truly preached grace and forgiveness every week from the pulpit he would be called a heretic.
I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.
Many people in life have experienced failure. Moses wanted to go into the Promised Land. He had led the Children of Israel for forty years to the Promised Land. God did not permit him to enter that land himself. He caught a vision of it from Mount Pisgah. David longed to build a temple for God. Because of his sin, he was not permitted to do that. But he still has influenced many through his leadership as king in Israel and through his many psalms. Jeremiah wrote about his own sense of failure. He had preached for thirty-eight years that the end was coming for the nation of Israel, but it did not. He experienced only rejection from the people. He felt that he was a failure. But history proved him correct in his prophecy.
Adoniram Judson wanted to go as a missionary to India with the gospel of Christ, but that door was closed and he turned to Burma. Caruso was told by a music teacher that he had no real potential as a singer. He didn’t listen to that word of failure but went on to be one of the greatest singers of all time. Einstein failed physics. Walter Scott tried to write poetry, but was unable to compose very good poems. Later he wrote novels and became one of the outstanding writers of all times. Georgia Harkness wanted to be a missionary but that door was closed. She went on in her education and got a Ph.D. from Boston University and later became the first woman to be a professor in a theological seminary and to be admitted as a member of the American Theological Society. Helen Montgomery was discouraged from translating the New Testament because she was a woman. But she finished her translation and it was widely praised and accepted.
Lloyd Douglas was a minister in California and resigned his church with a sense of failure as pastor. At the urging of his brother in law, who reminded him that he had always wanted to write a novel, he began to write. His first novel was the famous Magnificent Obsession. Edison wanted to be a newspaperman, but he spilled acid on the papers and was fired. Later when he was working in his lab and had failed eleven hundred times with various experiments, somebody asked Edison: “Doesn’t that mean that you have failed?” “No,” he responded. “It just means I know eleven hundred things that don’t work!” Charlotte Elliot was ill and suffered greatly but wrote over one hundred hymns.
Many persons have failed in their original goals. Few reach everything they aim for the first time. R. H. Macy failed seven times before his store caught on in New York City. Whistler, the artist, wanted to be a soldier but failed his chemistry exams at West Point. John Creasy, an English novelist, received seven hundred fifty-three rejection slips before the first of his five hundred and sixty-four novels was published. Babe Ruth struck out thirteen hundred and thirty times. But he also hit seven hundred and fourteen home runs.
Charles Kettering of General Motors, one of this century’s great creative minds, once wrote these words about the value of learning to fail:
An inventor is simply a person who doesn’t take his education too seriously. You see, from the time a person is six years old until he graduates from college he has to take three or four examinations a year. If he flunks once, he is out. But an inventor is almost always failing. He tries and fails maybe a thousand times. If he succeeds once then he’s in. These two things are diametrically opposite. We often say that the biggest job we have is to teach a newly hired employee how to fail intelligently. We have to train him to experiment over and over and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work.
From your failures you can learn what doesn’t work and you can take another approach. There is more growth in risking something great and failing than succeeding at something easy or insignificant without cost or risks.
A Radical Idea
We may fail in one area of life sometimes. That failure, however, does not have to become final. We can learn from our losses and be better persons because of these experiences.
Wayne Dyer has challenged us to consider what he describes as a “radical idea.”
“There is no such thing as failure! Failing is a judgment that we humans place on a given action. Rather than judgment, substitute this attitude: You cannot fail, you can only produce results! Then the most important question to ask yourself it, ‘What do you do with the results you produce?’”
Whether it is learning to play the piano or guitar or taking up golf or mastering the computer or baking a cake, we may not do well at first. Do we look at the results of our efforts and then ask, “Where do I go from here? What have I learned to help me move further along?” Each ‘failure’ provides a learning opportunity to move us toward achieving better results next time.
In one of Paul’s Epistles he writes that John Mark had deserted him. He and Barnabas had a falling out over John Mark. Paul felt that Mark had failed him when he needed him. We don’t know why Mark deserted Paul. Was he homesick or afraid? We don’t know. Barnabas continued to work with Mark. Later Mark became one of the great saints in the early church and the author of one of the gospels. Paul changed his mind about him and requested in one of his last letters, “Bring John Mark with you, because he is a great comfort to me.”
Mark’s failure was not final. Like Mark and many others, we can learn from our failures to become stronger and better persons. “The value of a man,” (or woman) Paul Tournier writes, “is not to be measured so much by his successes as by the way he bears his undeserved failures, that nothing is more dangerous for a man than unlimited success.”
This month, Energion Publications’ author, Dr. Harvey R. Brown, Jr., shares, with her permission, his daughter Liz’s post from her blog, The Single Side.
Dr. Brown’s contribution to Energion Publications’ Topical Line Drives Series is a book entitled Forgiveness: Finding Freedom from Your Past. From Dr. Brown: Liz Brown used to be “Bitsy,” but she fired that name in junior high and became Liz. She is amazing. We have quite a story to share together about our relationship. We were wired so differently, it was really tough to connect with each other as I was parenting her. But after my renewal in 1996, she and I connected at a heart level that neither of us dreamt was possible. The most introverted of all my children, she and I have shared the platform together telling our story at the Korean-American Presbyterian Church national youth event in New Jersey a decade or so ago. When she found out that I was going to be the main speaker for this week, she asked what my topics were. When I told her that one of them was entitled “Healing Father Wounds,” Liz declared, “You can’t share that without my sharing it with you.” I contacted the organizers of the event and they thought it was a wonderful idea. By the time everything was finished, Liz and I co-presented a main session, she had her own session, and she did a separate event for girls only. My introvert! Not only that, she has traveled and participated in ministry schools in New Zealand, and spoken at conferences in Finland. She’s not one to put herself forward, but others have discovered (as I have known) that she has some wonderful insights into Father’s love and His healing Grace. Like I have told her, she is a gifted talker. I always delight when I know that others are getting to hear the Liz that I know. – Dr. Harvey, R. Brown, Jr. (Dad) Am I Not Enough? Pandora’s box flung open by Liz Brown
I am officially breaking my own rules about blogging. “One per week,” I promised myself. “More than that would be overload for readers.” So I thought of writing this today as a draft and releasing it soon. I just can’t do it. Some things cannot be placed on hold. … See more
I had occasion the other day to ride through a cemetery. The trip was neither business nor pleasure. Not the business many preachers know as conducting a funeral. Nor was there some unique pleasure of learning about forebears or history. I was taking a shortcut. Very few people take shortcuts through cemeteries. Most are there for the long haul… part of the residential program.
I live in one of the biggest tourist areas east of the Mississippi. Sevier County—which contains Sevierville, Pigeon Forge, and Gatlinburg, Tennessee—is within one day’s drive for 75% of our nation’s population. Our county is adjacent to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the most visited National Park in the United States. This is significant because most of the Park’s 11-14 million annual visitors stay and play in Sevier County. And they drive on our roads.
Imagine, if you will, dropping an extra 70,000 or so people into your little town for the weekend. Or the month. Or the summer. Or the summer and the fall. Maybe now you can imagine why I would be willing to take a shortcut through a cemetery.
My local church meets in a building on Sugar Hollow Road in Pigeon Forge. If I stay off the main drag (the Parkway), I can cut through Shiloh Cemetery, get onto Sharp Hollow which leads to Goose Gap then Clear Fork and Hatcher Top Roads. Perhaps that’s bewildering to you. But it saves me about thirty-two minutes of a fifteen minute drive. That’s probably just a blink of God’s eye. But the older I get, the more aware I am of how much every blink counts. Which brings me back to the cemetery.
Tombstones tell very little about the persons whose remains occupy the graves. The text on the markers normally includes the name, year of birth and year of death. And of course, there’s the ever-present dash separating those years.
That dash is not really a straight line. It’s a series of moments meshed together, a continuum of time, events, experiences and relationships that form someone’s history—a history that only God knows.
You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. – Psalm 139:16 (NLT)
We often think of what happens to us as random, unrelated incidents. From time-to-time we seem to be able to connect the dots, but unless we are trusting in Father’s providence, we see our lives as scrambled, tangled messes. And we begin to label and define ourselves by our failures and our sins rather than our successes.
You, as well as I, have probably called yourself a “failure”—especially if you have found yourself stuck in a cycle of repetitive sin. All the while your heart’s desire was to be one of those “overcomers.” But no matter how hard you tried, every setback or moment of defeat moved you closer to hopelessness. Dejection latched onto you like a blood-starved leach sucking away hope and life by the bucket full. Once again you uttered a self-proclaimed epithet, “I am such a failure.”
If this scenario is replayed enough times, these moments begin to shape your identity. You lose sight of the fact that just because you have experienced failure, the experience does not mean that you are a failure.
After such a moment of failure, I often have felt like I was destined to live in defeat. I fought recurring battles with pornography since my early teens. After becoming a follower of Jesus as a young adult, many things changed in my life. But the episodic battles with porn continued. Each time I fell, I repeated the “I am a failure” phrase. Moment piled upon moment until I believed that my destiny would never change. I would live the rest of my life like a hamster on its treadmill—running like crazy but never making any progress distancing myself from the demons which plagued me.
Would I go to Heaven? I was convinced that God’s grace and forgiveness would still work… even for me. 1 John 1:8-9 were forever true. But the cycle of being stuck in repetitive sin was my destiny. I was just too broken, too uniquely flawed to ever be whole. Or holy.
But praise be to the King Almighty, Invisible, Immortal, the Only Wise God! All that changed in an encounter I had with the Holy Spirit during a conference in St. Louis twenty years ago. (You can read the story of my deliverance in the book, When God Strikes The Match.)
Three weeks ago, my good friend Tony Roberts made the following statement during a sermon: “The devil isn’t after a moment. He’s after your destiny.”
My memory immediately flashed through various moments—events of failure that, at the time, seemed to be the culmination of some demonic tactic to keep me living in defeat. But I now believe that the moments of defeat were not the objective. These moments were battles intended to demoralize me and cause me to forget my identity as a child of God. And if I forget or lose my identity, I move from being a victor to a victim.
As a Holy Spirit filled, born again believer in Jesus Christ, I am a child of a loving Father. The same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead lives within me! I am not just victorious, but I am more than a conqueror through him who loved me.
I am not a hopeless, hapless failure. I am holy through the cleansing of His blood. He is able to keep me from falling and present me faultless before his glorious presence…and with great joy (Jude 24-25). He is able to cause all things to work together for good because I love him and am called according to his purpose.
I know how easy it is to get stuck in those failure moments and lose sight of my identity. Been there. Done that.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. – Hebrews 12:1-3 ESV
Moments will pass. But my destiny is forever.
In other words, your race is a dash… the one between those dates that will be on your tombstone. Sure, there will be moments. But above all, there is a destiny that awaits you as a son or daughter of God.
Recently here on EDN, Robert Cornwall had an excellent article on the need to study history. On that point I completely agree. That said, I thought the view of history in the article he recommended was a bit binary and one sided. To be sure, there is a lot of truth in the description of Confederate monuments being linked to the “the Lost Cause” and when I was younger (i.e., the 1960s and 70s) it was still not all that uncommon to hear at least some of the older southerners refer to “the war of northern aggression.”
We have so much trouble with the word grace because it is such a wild and unpredictable word. Defined as “God’s unmerited favor” it seems simple enough – until in the divine economy it is put into practice.
Open up your English Bible and turn to Luke 23:34. Here’s how the verse reads in the Holman Christian Standard Bible: “And Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’” I’m curious if your translation has a footnote at the bottom of the page dealing with this particular verse. The RSV has a footnote at the bottom of the page that reads, “Other ancient authorities omit the sentence And Jesus . . . what they do.” The ESV has one that reads, “Some manuscripts omit the sentence And Jesus . . . what they do.” Or maybe your translation has the entire verse in brackets. That’s what the Holman Christian Standard Bible does, along with a note that reads, “Other mss omit the bracketed text.” Maybe this is the first time you’ve ever even noticed that note. It might be surprising, but believe me when I say it’s not that wild. Manuscripts before the age of the printing press and Xerox machines were copied by hand. As they were used, they got wore out. As they got wore out, new copies had to be made. There’s a least a question about whether or not Jesus really prayed for the forgiveness of those who were crucifying him. Some manuscripts record that he did, others leave this verse out. We have to wrestle with this when we study our New Testament.
Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:43-44 that we are to love our enemies seems not only difficult but, if we are honest, impossible to put into practice. How, for example, do persons who were freed from years of being imprisoned by terrorists, forgive their enemies? How do relatives, who stand before the Viet Nam Memorial in Washington, D.C., love the enemies who killed their relatives and friends? How do the millions of Jews who saw their husbands, wives, children or parents gassed, victimized and tortured in Nazi concentration camps, forgive them? How do the Japanese, who lived in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, forgive us for dropping the bomb on them? How do the relatives of those who were killed in the twin towers which collapsed from the crashed planes of the 9/11 attacks forgive those who were responsible for such an act?
A reporter was interviewing an elderly Kentucky farmer and posed an obvious-answer question: “You’ve been farming for over sixty-five years; I bet you’ve seen a lot of changes in that period of time, haven’t you?” The farmer replied, “I certainly have. And I’ve been against every one of them.”
Last night I had the privilege of chatting with Harvey Brown, Jr., author of the book Forgiveness: Finding Freedom from Your Past in the Topical Line Drives series.
by Dr. William P. Tuck, author of The Church Under the Cross, The Journey to the Undiscovered Country, Overcoming Sermon Block: The Preacher’s Workshop, The Last Words from the Cross, Holidays, Holy Days and Special Days: Preaching Through the Year and more! His blogsite is: friarsfragment.com
by Dr. Harvey Brown, Energion Publications Author
