In This Month's Report:
* Editorial - What Are We For...?
* Health Update - Getting Through the Valley
* Feedback - Encouragement
* March Ministry - Impacting the Northeast and Beyond
* News and Resources - Monoliths Mark Garden of Eden
* Products - Four Exciting Resources (see link below)
* Partnership - Invest In God's Program for the Northeast of America
* God Thoughts - Calvin Coolidge

We would love to hear from you; please send us your feedback today. Don’t forget the ever-popular 'GOD THOUGHTS' at the end of this report. Enjoy! JB

(This month, I have included an outstanding article by Robert Lynn. It has been edited for brevity. Jeff)
 

What Are We For...?

Let me ask a rather bold question. Is it possible that Protestant theology can occasionally find itself parked in a cul-de-sac rather than cruising down the theological highway because it sometimes begins at the wrong place? I ask that humbly, not as a critic from the outside, but as a rather assertive son of the Reformation.

We tend to start our reflection on life in the world, not from the vantage point of creation, but from the vantage point of the fall. We seem to start our thinking with the question of sin. Our conversational paradigm seems to be, “Sin is wrong, and Jesus is the answer.” Where that leaves us culturally is having the reputation of being the folks who always know what we’re against and are always looking for new ways to say it. The consequence is that we tend to be rather negative people, and our churches tend to be rather negative places.

So, we’re against abortion, euthanasia, premarital sex, alcohol, certain kinds of music, the ordination of women, materialism, homosexuality, certain political parties and philosophies. We’re against this and we’re against that. It appears sometimes that we’re against everything. To those around us, we may sound less like bearers of world-changing news and more like Groucho Marx in the film Horse Feathers singing,

"I don't know what they have to say,
It makes no difference anyway—
Whatever it is, I'm against it!
No matter what it is or who commenced it,
I'm against it!"

But our life together in Christ isn’t simply about deciding what we’re against, what we won’t do, and what we won’t allow. It’s also about deciding what we’re for.

Please don’t misunderstand. The Bible is against many things. Why? Because God created men and women in His image to live with Him and one another in a way that gives rise to human flourishing. God isn’t against things simply to prove He’s big enough to make rules and powerful enough to enforce them. He’s against the things that undermine or destroy the well-being of those who bear His image. As someone once said, if you live against the grain of the universe, you’re sure to get splinters. The Ten Commandments, for example, teach us how to live with the grain of the universe so that we might experience the fullness of what it means to be truly human. God is against certain things because He is for other things.

I fear that in America, the evangelical church is largely known for what it is against. Its image in the culture is one that seems negative and angry. The result is that the culture seems to be quite clear about what we’re against but seems to have little understanding of what we are for. Is it the case that we have failed to adequately explain the Gospel to our culture — to define and explain what it means to live positively in God’s world? And so a question I put to myself and to you, to my church and your church: Do those around us see us and see our churches as merely being against something or do they also see us as being for something?

In the early church, there was a lot to be against in the Roman Empire — slavery, the violence and brutality of the games, infanticide, abortion, homosexuality, women treated as semi-property, the abuse of Roman imperial power to crush dissent and oppress minorities. And early church leaders did speak out about what they were against.

But the early church wasn’t simply against sin and evil, cruelty and violence. Christianity became the dominant faith because it pursued goodness. It gave a civilization a new idea of humanity in a world saturated by cruelty, violence and the abuse of power. It provided an example in Christian community of what true human flourishing looked like.

Christianity revitalized life in Greco-Roman cities by providing new norms and new kinds of social relationships able to cope with many urgent urban problems. To cities filled with the homeless and impoverished, Christianity offered charity as well as hope. To cities filled with newcomers and strangers, Christianity offered an immediate basis for attachments. To cities filled with orphans and widows, Christianity provided a new and expanded sense of family. To cities filled with and torn by violent ethnic strife, Christianity offered a new basis for social solidarity. And to cities faced with epidemics, fires and earthquakes, Christianity offered effective nursing services.

Unlike those early Christians who entered deeply into their world to give the gift of being human, today we often create the escapist, separatist religious ghetto of what Ken Meyers calls a Christian look-alike culture. However, since it’s a look-alike ghetto, it shares the assumptions of modernity and post-modernity, just lightly dusted with badly done proof-texting. A therapeutic gospel, the centrality of self, the primacy of pop culture, the blandishments of modern marketing, the commitment to technique, to name a few examples, all find their way into the heart of church life. The tragic irony, of course, is that in the name of avoiding worldliness, we bring the world right in the front door of the church, with the same dehumanizing results. Simply being against worldliness has not served us very well.

The sins of modern culture that thwart and undermine human flourishing are real. All around us are the shapes and patterns of personal and cultural brokenness. Whatever they are, we should be against them. But the Christian story calls us to something more: the pursuit of goodness. Listen to the apostle Paul when he says in Philippians 4:8:

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things.

What must we be for — in our thinking and in our living — in order that we might see new glimpses of true human flourishing — God’s shalom — in our culture?

What might that look like? Well, we criticize the ugliness and emptiness of much modern art, yet are not ourselves the creators of objects of beauty and meaning that reflect the nature of Him Who is Beautiful and the source of all meaning. We should be the best storytellers of all because we are those who have been taught the story of the world and everything in it. But it’s not just creating high culture. In a time when family life can often be little more than five separate persons coming and going out of a house, having grazed separately at various times from a microwave oven, if I make dinner tonight for my family, nothing much will change in my family’s culture. But if I make dinner tonight, tomorrow night and for the next fifteen years of our children’s lives, that discipline alone will indeed create real human intimacy that is often not realized even in family life.

C. S. Lewis reminds us in his small but potent volume, The Abolition of Man, that at the center of Christian existence is the heart shaped by rightly ordered loves. We are not simply against lies, we are for truth; we are not simply against evil, we are for goodness; we are not simply against ugliness, we are for beauty. And why? Because we love and worship One Who is True, Good, and Beautiful — the Triune God Who calls us to be for the world because He is for the world. God so loved the world — is so for the world — that He gave His only Son that through Him the world might be saved — not reluctantly and by the ‘skin of its teeth’ but by a vast, unmeasured, boundless, and free love that makes all things new.

The Rev. Robert Lynn, a Wilberforce Forum Seminary Fellow, is associate pastor at Knox Presbyterian Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He is also a lecturer at Istanbul Reformed Seminary in Istanbul, Turkey.
 

To read the unedited version of this article, click here.
 

I am so grateful to everyone who responded to our appeal for prayer and support after my recent diagnosis of cancer in my esophagus.

As I write, I have completed the chemo and radiation treatments, which I have been receiving for the last six weeks. It has been a process that I would not wish upon my worst enemy. I will take the next month to recover my strength and then surgery is planned.

I will send you an update toward the end of this week.

Dear Jeff, We're praying for God's blessings to be poured out upon you and your family today and everyday. We are believing with you for God to completely restore your health and strength. You have been such a blessing and encouragement to us and the entire body of Christ. Thank you for everything you do! We appreciate you! God Bless you and your family. In Christ's love, Sue & Matt Mancinelli

Dear Jeff, Jeannine and I will continue to uphold the two of you as you go through this challenge. We have followed your ministry from the time you first got started and there is no doubt God has His Hand on you. He is faithful and in those darkest moments. He is present in all of His strength and power. May His Presence flood your hearts during this time. Our love and prayers, Tom & Jeannine Gonzalez