Pastors' Blog

The popular legend of Nero, the decadent emperor of Rome, fiddling while the imperial city burned in July, 64 AD is just that—a legend. First, the fiddle didn’t exist until the 11th century AD. Secondly, Nero was 35 miles away at his villa in Antium when the fire broke out. He did rush back to the city to begin relief efforts, but some of the citizenry accused him of igniting the conflagration. (For more details www.history.com/news/ask-history/did-nero-really-fiddle-while-rome-burned.) Nevertheless today’s vernacular still speaks of “fiddling while Rome burns”—i.e., acting as if nothing were out of the ordinary while the world around you falls apart.

I don’t suppose anybody could accuse us of fiddling while our own nation burns, could they? But then again, consider this potpourri of stories just this week:

•    Kaiser Family Foundation/CNN poll results on Tuesday announce “84% of white working class say government does not represent their views” (https://mobile.twitter.com/cnnbrk/status/778392163856056320).

•    In the September 2016 issue of Imprimis Frank Buckley (law professor George Mason University) contends America is now, in contradistinction to its past, “the story of class struggles”—dominated by “a New Class of lawyers, academics, trust-fund babies, and media types—a group that wields undue influence in both political parties and dominates our culture. . . . America has become an aristocracy” (p 4-5, Vol 45, Num 9).

•    Unarmed, 40 year old black man, Terrance Crutcher, with his hands up was shot last week and killed by Tulsa, Oklahoma police, when his car broke down in the middle of the street—one more blue on black video gone viral this summer [after writing this blog Charlotte erupted in violence overnight over a fatal police shooting on Tuesday].

•    Some NFL players, as a protest to mounting racial tensions and inequities in this nation, are now kneeling or remaining seated during the playing of the national anthem.

•    A naturalized American Muslim from Afghanistan is apprehended and charged this week with planting and exploding a series of bombs in the greater New York region over the weekend.

•    Two candidates share disapproval ratings near record highs for a presidential election—but where else can the nation turn?—evidence enough that the day after the election this nation will be critically divided—racially, economically, socially, politically, religiously, morally, et al.

“Fiddling while Rome burns”—acting as if nothing were out of the ordinary, while the world around us falls apart. Would that be true of you, of me, too?

In 3 weeks Hope Trending: A Crash Course on How to Live without Fear will go live to the nation and world on October 14 at 8 PM ET. For 9 evenings (livestreamed at www.hopetrending.org and simulcast live on HOPE-TV) a relationally appealing picture of a loving God will be presented to a nation whose hope and help lie far from the corridors of aristocracy, politics and division. Don’t the citizens and neighbors we do know, the friends and colleagues we do have, the people down the hall or down the street—don’t they deserve to know Him, too?

For over a year now we’ve been talking and praying about a new, innovative way to connect Christ with people we know. Now that Hope Trending is 3 weeks away—wouldn’t this be the right time to extend His invitation? So, forget the fiddle—let’s grab our faith—and make an invitation that could change a life forever. Our own.

The world’s heart has been broken over a video clip gone viral two weeks ago. Who can forget the picture of that five-year-old Syrian boy, pulled from the rubble of an Aleppo building, the victim of yet another lethal bomb in the war-torn city. Stunned and mute, the boy is seated on an orange jump seat in the back of an ambulance, the side of his head gashed by some projectile. While the video rolls, the young child stares back with blank expression, bewildered into silence. Not even a sob. Silence. What was he thinking in that moment of sheer terror? His chubby hand reaches up to his mane of hair, piled high now on his head, soaked in his own blood. The boy begins to rub his temple where the wound is coagulating. And as he rubs, his hand is soon stained red. Silence. Staring out the open gate of the vehicle, he keeps rubbing (http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/08/haunting-video-bewildered-syrian-b...).

What does five-year-old Omran Daqneesh have to do with you and me on this holiday weekend in this country surprisingly still at relative peace? (The “the boy in the ambulance,” as he is now remembered, survived, as did his parents and three siblings.) I wonder to myself if he is not a symbol of an entire civilization. A dazed world with a billion heartaches and as many broken lives, staring blankly into the lens of eternity, not knowing, and too wounded to even care, who is on the other side of that glass eye that stares back.

The narratives across the earth are a billion times different, but the story tragically the same: forces beyond our control locked in a mortal battle for this race, this very human race. We know the enemy and his dark heart. The insanity that rules his mind we know all too well.

But do we know the Father of the race? Do we share His shattered heart?

Jesus once asked: “‘Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. . . . You are worth more than many sparrows’” (Matthew 10:29-30). “‘Your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish’” (Matthew 18:14). “‘No, the Father himself loves you’” (John 16:27). “‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life’” (John 3:16).

“Not a sigh is breathed, not a pain felt, not a grief pierces the soul, but the throb vibrates to the Father’s heart. . . . [I]t is in this speck of a world, in the souls that He gave His only-begotten Son to save, that His interest and the interest of all heaven is centered. God is bending from His throne to hear the cry of the oppressed. To every sincere prayer He answers, ‘Here am I.’ He uplifts the distressed and downtrodden. In all our afflictions He is afflicted. In every temptation and every trial the angel of His presence is near to deliver” (Desire of Ages 356).

Into the world of Omran Daqneesh we must hurry to bring the urgently Good News of this Father of Jesus who is our Father, too. And Omran’s Father. And the fiercely loving Father of this very human race. Time is running out for Aleppo, Syria, the United States, the world. If we don’t go now, will we ever go?

Hope Trending is six weeks away. Like no other previous effort to communicate the Good News of our God, Hope Trending will plunge through the wide open door of the Internet, and through social media connect with thousands of this civilization. Not only through digital communities, but through the warm, friendly environ of your Watch Party, hundreds and thousands of Watch Parties. The stunned, blank face of that little Syrian angel is an impassioned appeal to those who know the Good News to share the Good News. While there is still time.

Which is why this is the right time for you to prayerfully assemble your Watch Party for Hope Trending—isn’t it? (For more information: hopetrending.org.)

Has the blogosphere always been this awash in conspiracy theories? I was reading a European writer the other day who commented (and perhaps for good reason) that Americans as a people seem to have a predilection for conspiracy theories—those wild suppositions claiming sinister powers are manipulating current events, the populace, politics, the markets, medical science (you choose), all for a nefarious end. For example, one blogger suggested  one of the presidential candidates is suffering from a secret malady that will cut short their candidacy and offered a YouTube link as proof. I clicked the link, and sure enough a score of sites with video footage to “prove” the malady. Really? Not to be outdone, a popular blog posed the suggestion this week the President is quietly preparing for an emergency suspension of the Constitution this fall so he might serve an indefinite and unconstitutional “third term.” Really?

Consider for a moment what this glut of information/misinformation streaming from the internet every nanosecond creates: (1) an attitude of suspicion and disbelief toward any internet-driven information; (2) an oversaturation that numbs the mind to what in fact may be critical and necessary information; (3) a skepticism toward all authority; (4) a subtle, increasing diversion from life’s most essential realities and truths; (5) the inability to even discern what is true; (6) an incapacity to respond in the event of a genuine crisis or emergency; and (7) a cynical rejection of any conspiracy theory at all.

Because as it turns out, the Bible unapologetically champions a single conspiracy, not as imaginary theory but as life-and-death truth. This week my summer worship reading through Ephesians ended with its stunning finale: “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:10-12). There they are—cosmic sinister powers manipulating humanity, government, nature, economies, politics, entertainment, the very stuff of our existence on this planet. To what end? “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8), “filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short”(Revelation 12:12).

But here’s a stunning rejoinder and promise: “[We] are to contend with supernatural forces, but [we] are assured of supernatural help. All the intelligences of heaven are in this army. And more than angels are in the ranks. The Holy Spirit, the representative of the Captain of the Lord’s host, comes down to direct the battle. Our infirmities may be many, our sins and mistakes grievous; but the grace of God is for all who seek it with contrition. The power of Omnipotence is enlisted in behalf of those who trust in God” (Desire of Ages 352).

What a picture of God in the midst of this cosmic battle! Grace for our litany of “sins and mistakes” grievous and many. Around the clock help and protection from the adversary. “The power of Omnipotence” for every child of God who wants Him. And all of it poured out on this campus through the mighty Holy Spirit, Jesus’ divine boots on the ground for this university this new year. There has never been a more optimistic time to trust the Savior. Let the conspiracy theorists have their day—in Christ the future is no theory—it’s a promise. Absolutely secure.

The nation is still reeling from Sunday morning’s headline of the bloody massacre in an Orlando night club in the wee hours of a new week. But already the news media’s scrolling litany of superlatives—“the worst mass shooting in U.S. history” “the greatest mass murder in American history”—along with its non-stop coverage of this horrific tragedy have numbed the American psyche once again. And as it was for San Bernardino California and Newtown Connecticut and Columbine Colorado, the 24-hour news cycle is eventually coopted by the new headline and the relentless pursuit of the next “breaking news.”

But left in the aftermath and forgotten in the chase will be the fifty families who will go on grieving their crushing loss—fifty funerals and memorial services, fifty caskets or urns, fifty homes and countless hearts forever broken. Fifty. A number that eventually may feel small, quite small . . . in comparison to a figure one day somewhere else that is sure to be higher.

Beyond the sheer tragedy of it all, what is stunning about the Orlando massacre is the convergence of the most inflamed issues that plague this election cycle’s national debate: Muslims, the LGBT community, the place of immigrants in this nation, the place of firearms in this society. But let’s reflect for a moment about minorities.

Take the minorities in this story.  The killer was an American-born Muslim from an immigrant family. The victims by and large were members of the LGBT community. The night club theme that fateful early morning was “Latin Night.” Minorities—people who are never identified as “minorities” in the raucous political debate of this presidential election season, but who nonetheless have been very much targeted by the rhetoric of this campaign—minorities.

Come to think of it, my own faith community is regarded as a religious minority. One candidate had trouble even pronouncing our name. But that’s OK. I grew up a minority as an American missionary’s kid in Japan. As an adult I remain in the minority as a member of a Sabbatarian community—one that worships on Saturday, while the rest of the Christian nation worships on Sunday. But I am proud to be a member of a minority. And I am grateful to be a citizen of a nation where minorities are protected from the majority.

But I fear that there are some even within my own faith community who have embraced the crowd-pleasing “keep the minorities out” spirit that now troubles America. I wonder if we have seriously, sufficiently thought through the implications of that populist mentality. Immigrant minorities, LGBT minorities, Muslim minorities, Sabbatarian minorities—the chant to “send them all home” eventually will catch up with us all.

Ponder this confession from the German pastor Martin Niemöller during the dark days of the Nazi government, words that bear repeating in this season of anti-minority fervor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_):

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

“‘You will leave Me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for My Father is with Me’.” (John 16:32) Jesus is still the minorities' Best Friend.