Freedom of religion applies to all Americans of all religions. I have often heard Christians thank God for the freedom to worship in the United States. Like freedom of speech, freedom of religion doesn’t apply only to popular, inoffensive ideas. In parts of the US, evangelical Christianity is viewed as offensive and dangerous. Should those regions be allowed to ban new church buildings?

Few Muslim countries allow freedom of religion. We should shame them by our example. Yes, it is indeed unfair that Muslims are allowed to build mosques in the US, while Christians are not allowed to build churches in Saudi Arabia, even though more than one million Catholic Filipinos live and work in Saudi Arabia. In fact, the laws of Saudi Arabia (and many other Muslim nations) directly contradict the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights – which is binding on Saudi Arabia as a UN member^[*]. What would we gain by lowering ourselves to the hypocrisy of Saudi Arabia?

The Gospel spreads through relationships and truth, not government enforcement. In Rodney Stark’s book Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome, the Baylor historian and sociologist demonstrates that the early church grew from 150 Jesus followers to more than 30 million through ordinary relationships: family members, coworkers, neighbors. Elsewhere, Stark has suggested that gaining its status as the state religion of the Roman Empire actually slowed the growth of Christianity. If we want to share the love of Christ with Muslims, we can do so only by building relationships with them, not by isolating them from our community.

Muslims already live in Northern Kentucky. This mosque would not be built if there were not already a community of Muslims in Northern Kentucky. By opposing the mosque, I’m not sure what we gain other than antagonizing our neighbors. Opponents of the mosque cite fears of terrorism. But is there a faster way to turn a Muslim youth against the US than by making him feel hated and unwanted?

What should we do then?

• Welcome our Muslim neighbors as fellow Americans and support their freedoms under the US Constitution.
• Build friendships with our Muslim neighbors so that they can witness Christian love and hospitality firsthand.
• Share the gospel with them in word and deed, in the hope that they will accept the good news of Jesus Christ.

Today, a major problem in Muslim countries is the perception that Christians are uncaring, immoral, and hypocritical. We may not be able to do much to shape the views of Muslims overseas, but shouldn’t we ensure that American Muslims see a better side of Christianity?

I’ve just read an interview with Hunter in the new Christianity Today (it’s not online yet). In it, he says something that really ticks me off whenever I hear it. He suggests that Christians need to move beyond politics, and he singles out the pro-life movement as an example:

What would a post-political gesture look like in the pro-life movement? Borrowing an example from a friend, imagine ten thousand families signing a petition in Illinois that declares they will adopt a child of any ethnic background and physical capability. If they wanted to do something spectacular, they could go to city hall for a press conference, announcing that in the state of Illinois there are no unwanted children. That would be a public — but not political — act. Such an act leads with compassion rather than coercion.

Cool idea — so why does it tick me off?

What does he think Christians are already doing?

Christians are already adopting children. My own employer (a Christian nonprofit) offers significant benefits to encourage adoption, and I suspect that many other Christian employers provide similar benefits. I would now describe some of my friends and colleagues who have adopted children (from both the US and overseas), but I wouldn’t know where to start, because there are so many of them.

As far as compassion goes, does Hunter know about the work of crisis pregnancy centers, like those affiliated with Care Net? I’ve worked for one, and I have many friends and family who have worked or volunteered for them. I don’t know many people who show more compassion on a daily basis to women and children who need help. These are Christians on the front lines of the pro-life movement.

Hunter’s idea is hardly original. A well-known Christian has already offered to adopt any “unwanted” child in America:

I want the child. Please give me the child. I am willing to accept any child who would be aborted and to give that child to a married couple who will love the child and be loved by the child. From our children’s home in Calcutta alone, we have saved over 3000 children from abortion. These children have brought such love and joy to their adopting parents and have grown up so full of love and joy.

Mother Teresa said this at the National Prayer Breakfast — in 1994.

When I read or hear someone suggesting that the pro-life movement needs to “show compassion” or “move beyond politics,” it suggests to me that person doesn’t actually know much about the pro-life movement. Hunter’s idea is a fine one, though I’m not really sure how a petition drive and a press conference on the city hall steps are supposed to be “post-political.” Considering the low media coverage of the enormous annual March for Life, I’m not even sure how “public” Hunter’s proposed gesture would be.

Instead of describing a hypothetical idea, however, why doesn’t he describe one of the many real Christians and Christian organizations who are already living out their compassion?

Hunter’s critique is rooted in concern over the use of power:

When Christians turn to law, public policy, and politics as the last resort, they have essentially given up on a desire to persuade their opponents. They want the patronage of the state and its coercive power to rule the day.

Yes – that’s absolutely right: pro-life Christians want the government to prevent fetuses from being aborted. If you believe that abortion ends a human life, how could you ask the government to do anything other than protect those lives?

Elsewhere in this same issue, Christianity Today describes Christians urging law enforcement and legislators to take stronger action against child prostitution and human trafficking (i.e. slavery). I’ve also mentioned Ohio State’s Price of Life event that addressed these same issues. Yes, it would be better if pimps and sex traffickers would give their lives to Jesus and voluntarily stop enslaving and raping children. Until then, what’s wrong with using the “coercive power” of the state to stop them?

James Davison Hunter is a very intelligent person, and I expect that I will read his book, sooner rather than later. This interview, though, makes me wonder whether he is really in touch with Christians who are working “to change the world.”

Easter Eggs

Do you think of worship, hospitality, or celebration as spiritual disciplines? If you’re like me, you associate the idea of “discipline” with things that are hard, like fasting, daily prayer, intense Bible study, and so on. But if a discipline is something that trains us to live and think rightly, then what better response to the resurrection can there be than over-the-top celebration?

In fact, celebration holds a place of honor in both of my top two books on spiritual disciplines. Richard Foster, in Celebration of Discipline, places celebration at the conclusion of his classic work, while Adele Ahlberg Calhoun puts Celebration at the very front of her Spiritual Disciplines Handbook.

Here’s what Calhoun writes about Celebration:

The world is filled with reasons to be downcast. But deeper than sorrow thrums the unbroken pulse of God’s joy, a joy that will yet have its eternal day. To set our hearts on this joy reminds us that we can choose how we respond to any particular moment. We can search for God in all circumstances, or not. We can seek the pulse of hope and celebration because it is God’s reality. Heaven is celebrating. Right now the cherubim, seraphim, angels, archangels, prophets, apostles, martyrs and all the company of saints overflow with joy in the presence of their Creator. Every small experience of Jesus with us is a taste of the joy that is to come. We are not alone — and that in itself is reason to celebrate. (Spiritual Disciplines Handbook, 27)

The Hickerson Family, all dolled-up for Easter

Here are a few ways that my family and I celebrated the resurrection of Jesus:

• Dressing up in new clothes (including new shoes for me)
• Attending a packed church, taking communion, and hearing a powerful message on the hope of the resurrection
• Singing “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” and the “Hallelujah Chorus” (and hearing perfect silence at that moment of tension before the final “Hallelujah”)
• Joining extended family and old friends for an Easter feast of lamb, ham, and too much sugar, all while being welcoming my principal role models of hospitality, my father- and mother-in-law
• Catching up – unexpectedly – with some good friends who have had a rough spring
• Puzzling over my 6-year-old’s sudden obsession over reading the Bible – and trying to decide whether it is sincere or not (and whether that matters)
• Delving into the study of God through conversation about justification and covenant
• For my wife, playing (and winning) some great board games with cousins and friends we don’t see nearly often enough

All in all, a great day of celebration. And I didn’t even mention the eggs.

How did you celebrate Easter?

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For it was not merely for those who believed on Him in the time of Tiberius Caesar that Christ came, nor did the Father exercise His providence for the men only who were not alive, but for all men altogether, who from the beginning, according to their capacity, in their generation have both feared and loved God, and practiced justice and piety towards their neighbours, and have earnestly desired to see Christ, and to hear His voice.

— Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.22.2, via Veli-Matti Kärkäinen, An Introduction to the Theology of Religions

Who was Irenaeus? He was an early Christian leader, Greek by ethnicity, Turkish by birth, who served as bishop in modern-day France. (See – globalism is not only a contemporary phenomenon!) He was the “spiritual grandson” of the apostle John, having been discipled by Polycarp, a disciple of John’s.

Spring Grove after the Windstorm

I delivered this devotional at this past week’s Christian Marketplace Network meeting.

What were you doing a year ago?

I was walking through my neighborhood, amazed at the damage caused by those incredible winds from Hurricane Ike. Our house was lucky, but other houses on my street looked like, well, like they had just been through a hurricane. My parents lost nearly 30 other trees on their property.

Photo: Spring Grove Cemetery after the windstorm by elycefeliz

Before the winds came, I could not have told you which trees would fall and which would stand. The Bible often uses this image of wind as a test that reveals our relationship with God. A person might appear to be strong and mighty, but when the winds come, we find out what they’re really made off.

Psalm 1 says that a righteous person is “like a tree planted by streams of water.” “Whatever he does prospers,” writes the psalmist.

Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away.

What distinguishes the righteous from the wicked? Why does one stand and prosper, while the other one blows away? The Arbor Doctor could tell you what you need to prepare your trees for a long and healthy life. This psalm tells us how to prepare ourselves. The righteous person loves the word of God. Verse 2 tells us:

…his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.

This Hebrew word “law” – torah – isn’t just a list of rules that God wants us to obey. It’s more like the teaching that we receive from a parent or a good mentor. The righteous person listens to that teaching, day after day.

God’s word is the food, water, and fertilizer we need to grow deep roots. None of us can predict when trials will come, but they will always come.

By spending time with God, though, and filling ourselves with his word, we prepare ourselves to stand firm on that day of trial.

Photo: Detail from a 1770 Bible, from eye2eye via Flickr.

Keith Danby, CEO of Biblica, stated

We shackled the NIV to the language and scholarship of a quarter century ago, thus limiting its value as a tool for ongoing outreach throughout the world.

The language of a quarter century ago! Gasp! Why, that was nearly…wait, that wasn’t that long ago was it? I was 8, Mary Lou Retton was on the cover of Wheaties, and a cool cartoon about transforming robots debuted on television. That was just yesterday, right? More on that in a moment.

Scot McKnight has pointed out that the NIV has been pretty regularly updated ever since it was first published. Really, if the TNIV or NIVi had just been called “NIV,” this might not have been nearly as big a deal.

How much revision is necessary after a “quarter century?” Changing scholarship is one thing. Paradoxically, we have access to much older texts of the Bible now than Christians or Jews have had for centuries. Earlier this year, the Codex Sinaiticus – a Bible over 1,600 years old! – was posted online in its entirety. As our best understandings of ancient Hebrew and Greek change, then by all means, so should our translations of Scripture.

What about language, however? Has the English language changed all that much in the past 25 years? Without a doubt, language has changed…but how much does that – should that – affect the Bible? The biggest change has been the wide acceptance of gender neutral language (which was the root of controversy regarding the TNIV). Beyond that, though, how much matters?

How timely do we want our Bible to be? Paraphrases like The Message can be helpful, especially in shocking us out of complacent readings of Scripture. The Bible, however, is a collection of books written between 1,900 and 3,000 years ago. “Timeless” is a trite, overused word – yet it describes the Bible quite well. The language we use to translate it ought to be able to stand the test of a few decades, shouldn’t it?

It’s also ancient. While the Bible is relevant to our own day, we should avoid the grave mistake of thinking that it was written for our culture and our times. When reading about the storm that rose up in the middle of night on the Sea of Galilee, we ought to remember that the disciples had no electric lights, no radar, no GPS, no outboard motor, no 7-day forecast – that they were at the complete mercy of the wind and waves. Jesus’ word of “peace” ought to be read in their context, not ours, in which we mostly think about weather only when it threatens to ruin our picnics.

While I agree that new converts and spiritual seekers ought to have a Bible that’s easier to read that the King James, our conversion is only the beginning of our life with the Bible. On my deathbed, I will be pondering the mysteries of Scripture just as much as I did on the day I gave my life to Christ – perhaps more so. The language of our Bible translations ought to be deep enough and strong enough for us to carry it with us for the long decades of following Christ. If you have ever known a passionate devotee of Jane Austen or Shakespeare (or the original Star Trek, for that matter), you’ll know that the power and nearness of language has little to do with how “up to date” it may be.

Speaking of up-to-date language, who in the world is Biblica? You probably know them better as the International Bible Society, but they changed their name earlier this summer. Everything needs revision now and then, I suppose.

There wasn’t time to mow the whole yard, so I made an executive decision to mow just the front lawn. So there I am, mowing my front lawn at 8:15 in the morning, with storm clouds moving in, knowing full well that my back yard looks horrible, with no plans to even attempt to clean it up for at least a week.

So, here’s the cheesy illustration: what’s your front lawn? When the storms of life move in, what do you rush to make presentable (or presentable enough compared to everyone around you)? What’s your back yard? What do you ignore because, even though it’s just as important and looks even worse, only you and your family can see it?

Photo: Ben McLoed, via Flickr

Each of these hymn lyrics, except for the Seventh Word, was written to an existing tune. Part of my love for hymns is their cross-cultural, cross-generational nature. Here’s just one example. My lyric, the Fifth Word, based on “I thirst,” was written to the tune “Love Unknown,” by early-20th-century composer John Ireland. But Ireland wrote his tune in order to fit a poem by Samuel Crossman (what a name!), written in 1664. It amazes me how the grace of Christ crosses over the centuries, and how I could take a part in this artistic conversation about the power of the cross.

For a long time now, I have intended to read Augustine’s City of God, his massive (1000+ pages in English translation) book about the fall of Rome, the will of God, and the “two cities” – the city of man and the City of God – that coexist during our current era. It connects several themes that I have been interested in, and, having heard many good things about the book, expected it to be enlightening.

I did not expect it to be so pastoral, however. This has been a difficult time for our nation in general and for my family in particular. I won’t go over the details here, but suffice it to say, it has been a rough 2009.

So, too, was the year 410 for Augustine. Alaric, king of the Visigoths, sacked Rome. It was a crushing defeat for the once-invincible Roman Empire, and many Roman pagans blamed Christians for “softening” their formerly great city. (Christianity had recently grown considerably in the Roman Empire.) For Augustine personally, it was a great tragedy, since he loved the city of Rome and the Roman glory that it stood for. He began City of God in 413, at the request of a former student, who was facing challenges from pagans that Christians were to blame for the fall of Rome.

Thus, the book begins with a consideration of evil and suffering, the classic question, “Why do the good suffer while the evil prosper?” Augustine, following the lead of Jesus, observes that suffering and prosperity fall on both the righteous and unrighteous alike, according to the will of God:

But he has willed that temporal goods and temporal evils should befall good and bad alike, so that the good things should not be too eagerly coveted, when it is seen that the wicked also enjoy them, and the the evils should not be discreditably shunned, when it is apparent that the good are often afflicted with them. (CoG, 1.9)

Suffering, however, takes on very different characters, depending on who suffers:

…when the good and the wicked suffer alike, the identity of their sufferings does not mean that there is no different between them. Through the sufferings are the same, the sufferers remain different. Virtue and vice are not the same, even if they undergo the same torment. The fire which makes gold shine makes chaff smoke; the same flail breaks up the straw, and clears the grain; and oil is not mistaken for lees because both are forced out by the same press…Stir a cesspit, and a foul stench arises; stir a perfume, and a delightful fragrance ascends. But the movement is identical. (ibid.)

The same suffering that leads the unrighteous to curse God, leads the good man to prayer.

Please join me in prayer for our Indian brothers and sisters in Christ.