The Christian Perspective Archives - STRATEGIES FOR LIVING

THE OTHER SIDE OF CHRISTIANITY

Maggie Gobran, sometimes known as the “Mother Teresa of Egypt,” was invited to speak at the 2011 internationally televised Global Leadership Summit, sponsored by the Willow Creek Community Church, Chicago, IL., and I was able to sit in on the broadcast.

In concluding her remarks, Mama Gobran, as she is affectionally known, made this comment:

Silence your words so that you may listen to your thoughts; silence your thoughts so that you may listen to your heart; silence your heart so that you may listen to God.”

And then, resplendent in her all-white habit, she said, “I would like to end my presentation by thanking God and blessing you.” And then, kneeling to the carpet, face in her hands against the floor, Mama Gobran spent the next five minutes in silent prayer. There was not a dry eye in the house as several hundred Pastors and church leaders watched, profoundly moved as the benevolent “Mother of Cairo” prayed for us.
Mama Gobran is an apt example of what I’m writing about.

She was raised in wealth and already successful in the business world when a personal visit to the garbage slums servicing the city of Cairo touched her heart. She soon sold all she owned, and together with an army of men and women who shared her vision, founded Steven’s Children and blessed over 30,000 families with God’s love.

A manufacturing center that gave many of her kids a marketable skill soon followed, along with primary and elementary schools, medical clinics, and a home for boys and one for girls who had been abandoned by their families. A new world was opened to children who had no hope, and no clue how to break the chains of poverty, disease, and hopelessness by which they were bound.

I make a point of this for America has sometimes accused evangelicals of being intolerant, homophobic, anti-abortion, arrogant, and out of step with this modern age. Here we have the other side of Christianity. Indeed, the evangelical community has much to say about moral and social issues that violate principles given us in God’s Word, but we are also involved, wherever there is a need, lending a helping hand.

And, yes, Maggie, we heard you! We have silenced our words, quieted our hearts, and listened to God. And we have accepted your challenge. Franklin Graham’s Samaritan’s Purse, the Salvation Army, World Vision, and many others, have united to serve, as in present day Ukraine, on the front lines of suffering. We have been working one-on-one with the most disadvantaged and hurting, showing by our actions that God loves you and so do we.

“By this,” Jesus said, “will everyone know you are my disciples, if you have love.” Indeed!

Elon Musk: The Trumph & Tragedy of One Man’s Life

Starlink satellites, Tesla Motors, the SpaceX complex and, mark my word, a soon to be renamed village of Boca Chica to be known as Starbase, Texas, all owe their success to one man: Elon Musk. This gentleman has made an impact on the scientific and business community as none other in the history of mankind. He is, truly, one-of-a-kind.

In addition to his venture into space and the automotive industry, Musk founded the Boring Company, a tunnel construction company, co-founded the web software company Zip2 with his brother Kimbal, (acquired by Compaq for $307 million in 1999). Additionally, he co-founded the online banking enterprise x.com which merged with Confinity in 2000 to form PayPal, which in turn was purchased by eBay for $1.5 billion, $100 million of which went to Musk for his 11.7% ownership share (Wikipedia).

Elon Musk, now just 50 years old, has my profound admiration and must be congratulated for his genius and willingness to push ahead when failure seemed imminent. Tesla, the electric vehicle company Musk helped launch, nearly went bankrupt in 2013, but by May 2013, Tesla had turned everything around and posted its first quarterly profit.

What we have here is, again, a maxim held by almost all successful people: when you have a dream, you must never, but never, give up. SpaceX, as a case in point, endured three failed launches before a fourth turned out to be a smashing success. From that moment on, the company went on to impact southern Texas, the scientific community, and space exploration in a way no one could have imagined.

This engaging entrepreneur has impressed us with his genius, made an indelible name for himself, and developed new avenues of interstellar exploration, but to what end? If not atheist, he is an agnostic, devoted as he is reported to have said, to “the advancement of humanity by using technology.” Courageous, intelligent, and determined, he is a man devoted to science and the universe. Heaven, however, is not on his radar.

It is, it seems to me, foolish and irresponsible to plan for this life alone. Elon Musk is building an empire on earth, with plans to colonize the moon and Mars. He has, however, at least from all we have been told, made no plans for life after death. The universe may beckon, the science of extra-terrestrial travel may intrigue him, but within forty years or so, all of this will mean nothing. And eternity lasts for a long time.

And that, to me, is tragic. No one need question the good he has done. But, as Jesus said, “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?” Elon Musk’s accomplishments will be overshadowed by the one question God is sure to ask: what did you do with my Son? A man can ignore Jesus Christ, deny Him, or dismiss Him as irrelevant to modern life for only so long. Death is inevitable and no amount of good we have done will count to our credit if we have turned our backs on the gift of eternal life found only in Jesus Christ.

On Our Survival as a Society

If you were to define an absolute as a principle that is universally valid, a point of reference that is unconditional, there are four absolutes: evil, love, justice, and forgiveness.

There is only one time in the history of mankind that all four absolutes came together: at Calvary. It was there, when Jesus, the Messiah, was crucified, that evil was seen for what it can do to a society. And it was there that love was defined, that God’s justice prevailed, and that forgiveness for sin was made possible.

To those who nailed Jesus to the cross, it may have seemed like just another execution. But the man they nailed to a cross was the divine Son of God, and their act had eternal consequences. “It is finished,” Jesus said as He took His final breath, and indeed, it was. Finished was the predominance of human evil, finished any question about Jesus’ love, and finished was man’s alienation from God. Forgiveness for sin, and a viable relationship with God, was now available to all who would believe.

What we have here is more than a religious point of view. America is at a crossroads, and it is time we take a hard look at what we are doing to ourselves. If we survive as a society, evil must be condemned, love must be unconditional, justice must be unrestricted, and forgiveness must be without limit. These four absolutes define us, and our survival as a society may well be at stake.

I am sure some feel I am over-dramatizing the state of our nation, that my words are little more than a tempest in a teapot. We have harnessed the pandemic, we have survived an economic crisis, and we are slowly getting back to normal. But another pandemic has overtaken us, an evil that is both moral and spiritual.

We live in an age of relativism, but we can’t survive without an objective standard of truth. God no longer figures in our national thinking, and the Bible is no longer featured in the principles that guide our nation. But there must be a foundation for right and wrong that cannot be qualified, compromised, or minimized. If no one is wrong, if predispositions must be respected, if a radical minority can dominate our national life, pandemonium will follow.

We are a divided nation, polarized by forces none of us seem able to control. We decry evil and injustice but see no way to stop the deterioration of moral responsibility evident in almost every segment of our society. If ever there was a time when America needed Jesus and the message He preached, that time is now.

When Ignorance is Bliss

Lee Strobel, a court reporter for the Chicago Tribune, was a skeptic, an avowed atheist, convinced belief in God was little more than wishful thinking. He had given Christianity only superficial consideration but had read enough philosophy and history to convince himself the Christian faith was bogus.

And then his wife became a Christian. And rather than become a fanatic and religious prude, Leslie impressed him by the fundamental changes that came to her character, integrity, and outlook on life. Accordingly, then, Strobel decided to check it out.

Typical of his work ethic, Lee scheduled a series of interviews with leading Christian scholars. Evaluating the faith from every conceivable angle, he became convinced of the unthinkable: there was truth to his wife’s newfound faith. And two years later, Lee Strobel became a Christian himself.

So dramatic was the change in Strobel’s life his daughter, five-year-old Alison, is reported to have said, “I want God to do for me what he has done for Daddy.” Had it not been for his wife and his honesty, Lee would have remained an agnostic, convinced the Christian faith is without merit and Jesus a fraud. But he checked it out!

The Gospel record is an eyewitness account written while the protagonists were still living. Far from being reconstructed tradition, the four Gospels were written within thirty years of Jesus’ life. Many of those involved were still living; the facts could be verified.

The Christian faith is open to scrutiny, and the Gospel record available for evaluation. And yet, an amazing number of people who reject the Gospels have never read them. If what the writers tell us is true, however, our eternal well-being is at stake. So why the ignorance?
Two reasons come to mind.

The Gospels represent an account of a supernatural incursion into first-century society. If one rejects that premise out of hand, one cannot accept the Gospels as recorded history. Never before has a man been born of a virgin, walked on water, raised three people from the dead, and predicted His own demise. Clearly, Jesus was whom He said He was, or He was a fraud and a lunatic. You can’t have it any other way.

But the real reason most people reject, or at best, refuse to consult, the record is personal. If what Jesus said is valid, it demands profound changes to our lifestyle, and that is something most people don’t want to even think about. It’s not that people disbelieve; they don’t want to believe. They are satisfied with the way things are, show little fear of death, and are secure in believing this life is all there is. Ignorance, indeed, is bliss … especially when it comes to Jesus and His claims on each of our lives.

We ignore God … only to our peril. To act as if we are going to live forever, to give no thought to our eternal future, to ignore the evidence God has given, seems to be the utmost expression of irresponsibility. But belief, life-changing faith, evidence not subject to doubt, comes only to those who come to God with an open heart.

For more thoughts like these, follow me at indefenseoftruth.net.

ON BEING CONSERVATIVE IN A PROGRESSIVE SOCIETY

I am a conservative, writing and defending my point of view before a progressive society, a message, I suspect, few people want to hear. But I am convinced America is at a crossroads, with the future of our great nation at stake; I must take a stand.

No one can question the moral deterioration that has taken place in America in just the last ten years. The right to life, the authority of God’s Word, and traditional marriage are out. Abortion on demand, co-ed bathrooms, and gender reassignment are in. Meanwhile, progressives are proposing a restructuring of America that will re-chart our future and destroy much of what has made America great.

Our nation is in the hands of a generation of men and women who have come up through our educational system with no idea what the Christian faith is all about. They have been told that truth is relative, evolution is a fact, the cosmos is all there is and all there will ever be. To them, if they give Him any thought, Jesus Christ is a “nice guy” Who lived two thousand years ago and has little relevance to our lives today.

“America is a nation at war.… Our very religious liberties are in question, and they are being chiseled away one chip at a time. In recent years militant special interest groups have made it their goal to co-opt our religious liberties and force industry and government to go beyond tolerance of their views and demand full approval of them. Anyone who believes otherwise is told to shut up. We’ve become a society that obsesses over tolerance and acceptance of everyone—except God” (Todd Starnes, God Less America, Foreword).

But there is a problem in all of this that everyone seems to have missed. Two laws of life, unavoidable and beyond question, are going to have a major impact on our nation in the years to come.

First, there is the law of diminishing returns. Whether it is wealth or power or pleasure, the more you get the more you want. It is not without reason that political aspirants continue to sponsor programs we cannot afford and make promises they cannot keep.

Then there is the law of sowing and reaping. The Bible says, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption, but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.” We have sown to the wind; we are, sooner or later, going to reap the whirlwind.

We must not abandon the moral foundation on which our nation was established. David Barton, writing in Original Intent, has noted that “prominent Founders saw the Ten Commandments––and religious codes in general––as the foundation of American civil law. The belief was clear that public adherence to religious principles was the greatest source of security for civil government” (p. 173).

The Bible says, “Everything in the world — the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.”

Listen up, America. Think before you act. Your future is at stake.

THE PERSONIFICATION OF EVIL

He was a young man with a future. As the only man left in the family, he was fortunate to have a dedicated mother who took in washing to put her ambitious son through Seminary. She was hoping for a priest; what she got was a monster.

The Tbilisi Georgian Orthodox Seminary was no place for a young Joseph Stalin. Impressed by the writings of Karl Marx, he gave up on God to pursue a career dedicated to social change and personal power. He failed to make the priesthood, but as a self-serving insurrectionist, he was a smashing success.
After Lenin died in 1924, Stalin set out to destroy the old party leadership, executing potential rivals, and assuming the position as leader of the Soviet Union. Although he transformed the Soviet state from a peasant society into an industrial and military superpower, he is best remembered for the death of as many as twenty million of his own people, executed to perpetuate his hold on power.

At some point in the process Joseph Stalin had to face up to life’s most important question: What will you do with God? We have each inevitably had to deal with that question and where we came out, what we decided, was a determining factor in the person we have become.

What if there is no God? What if Jesus was a fraud and Christianity a bogus faith?

If there is no God, there is no coherent meaning to life. Without God you lose the sacred essence of human existence. What meaning do you attach to life? Your presence on earth is an accident, your journey through life, survival of the fittest, and your death, a meaningless end.

And if there is no God, there is no life after death, and this is the only heaven you will ever know; this is as good as it gets! Your dreams and drives end at the grave; there is no tomorrow. And for Joseph Stalin or Mother Teresa, it’s all the same.

If there is no God.

But that is the question, isn’t it? And God has given us an answer in the life, message and resurrection of His Son. “Anyone who has seen me,” Jesus said, “has seen the Father.” Our access to God, what we can know of Him, what our finite minds are capable of understanding, comes through and only through Jesus Christ.

The Apostle John had it right. “In Him was life,” he wrote, “and that life was the light of men.” If you are to find meaning to your existence, purpose to your journey, and the peace of mind that comes from knowing eternal life awaits, you have only one alternative: Jesus must be the Lord of your life. And what you do with Him is going to make all the difference in your world.
For more thoughts like these, follow me at indefenseoftruth.net.