Syrian Refugees and Christian Tension

Posted on November 19, 2015 by Steve Foster

The longer I live the Christian life, the more I realize that it is a life often lived in tension. We live in the "in between" with two opposing but complementary biblical principles serving to keep us balanced.

I have felt that tension recently with the debate regarding Syrian refugees.

On one side, concerned Christians call for open-handed compassion along with open hearts and open borders. On the other side, equally concerned Christians call for tighter screening, security for citizens, and an awareness that evil, often disguised in sheep's clothing, does exist in this world.

Whichever side one falls (or leans to), there can often be disdain and mischaracterization of the other.

This particular issue is amplified by our unique position as Christians in this nation. We are both members of the body of Christ (the church) and a vital part of the governance of this nation (the state).

The church-state distinction is a tension in itself for the believer. We are both citizens of heaven and citizens of a nation. We are commanded to honor our leaders and obey the laws of this nation (Rom. 13:1-7; 1 Peter 2:13-17) but also to remember that we are strangers and pilgrims on this earth loyal to the lordship of Jesus Christ first and foremost (Acts 5:29; Matt. 10:16-20).

The purpose of the state is different from the purpose of the church.

The state has one primary job description in Scripture: to punish evildoers and to give incentive for proper behavior (1 Peter 2:14). The state wields the "sword" of temporal punishment, protecting citizens and preserving peace by executing wrath on those who would seek to destroy the nation or harm lives within the nation (Rom. 13:4)

The church, on the other hand, has a different job description: to make disciples of Jesus Christ by living exemplary lives, showing love to one another, and preaching the gospel of salvation in Christ alone (Matt. 28:19-20; 1 Peter 2:11-12).

As Martin Luther noted: God has ordained the two governments: the spiritual, which by the Holy Spirit under Christ makes Christians and pious people; and the secular, which restrains the unchristian and wicked so that they are obliged to keep the peace outwardly.

For the Christian in America, we must think in both spheres–church and state–at the same time. We have the challenge that a Christian involved in any form of civil government would face: How do I both lead well as a protector of the citizenry and serve well as a follower of Christ?

I have often seen Christians take verses and exhortations aimed at the church and try to apply them to the state. Turning the other cheek is a challenge in a Christian's personal relationships. It is does not make for a tenable civil government.

When the state tries to act like the church, it ignores the reality of sin and the dangers of evil. In seeking to show "compassion," it actually encourages evil behavior.

Because the sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil (Ecclesiastes 8:11).

Yes, mercy has a place in civil government but it must never be at the expense of justice. A just judge must punish evil. A just military commander must be ready to destroy a nation's enemies. And a just leader must protect his people from those bent on harming others. To pretend otherwise is to pretend that one lives in a utopian paradise rather than on a sin-impacted earth.

On the other hand, when the church acts like the state, it is equally destructive. Instead of offering mercy and grace to those who need Christ, the church projects condemnation and self-righteousness. Yes, within the church, there is a necessity for leadership, accountability, and discipline but humility and grace must still take center stage.

When church and state are separate but working in harmony together, a society experiences its greatest measure of peace on this earth.

So back to the issue at hand.

When it comes to the Syrian refugees…and many other political issues confronting this nation…the Christian must think and live in tension.

As a voice in the state, the Christian must seek the peace and protection of the citizens of this nation. Law. Justice. Security. Military strength. These are the words of a vital, sustainable, effective government. They should not be disdained by Christians mistaking the state for the church.

As a voice from the church, the Christian must at the same time seek to do good in society, welcome the stranger, show the compassion of Christ, and share the message of Christ. Grace. Mercy. Charity. Moral strength. These are the words of a vital, growing, beautiful church. They should not be ignored by Christians mistaking the church for the state.

It's not an easy tension but it is a necessary one.

It's a tension that stretches us, humbles us, helps us grow.

If you don't feel the tension, then open your ears to hear the perspective of a brother or sister in Christ who may see things differently. And then join them in prayer for wisdom, strength, and unity as we seek to follow His Word and shine His light in this darkened world.

That's what it means to be the body of Christ.

Posted in Government/Politics | Leave a comment

Responding to Unfair Treatment

Posted on October 7, 2015 by Steve Foster

21 For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps:

22 “Who committed no sin,
Nor was deceit found in His mouth”;

23 who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously… (1 Peter 2:21-23)

To "this" we were called.

What is the "this"?

We go back to 1 Peter 2:20…But when you do good and suffer for it, if you take it patiently, this is commendable before God. 

Wow. As a believer in Christ, I was called to a new kind of life and one aspect of it is learning to endure unfair treatment with a gracious response and a tenacious trust in God.

I am not sure I signed up for that!

When are you most upset at traffic, at other people, at life, at God? If you are like me, then it is when you perceive that you are being unfairly treated. 

We hate unfair treatment. We have a deep sense of justice (part of the image of God) coupled with a deep sense of selfishness (part of the fall of mankind) and together they can make a potent combination when someone mistreats us.

Let's boil down most of our conflicts in our relationships, most of our bitterness, most of our unforgiveness. Someone has wronged us (whether in actuality or in perception) and we simply cannot get over it. Our neck stiffens, our heart hardens, and our expectations for vindication, vengeance, or a groveling apology can sometimes become obsessive.

This is not the kind of life that God has called us to. Why?

Because Jesus suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps.

Jesus died for us. He bore our sins. He is our one and only Savior. That fact is coming in 1 Peter 2:24-25.

But Jesus also suffered for us. Why?

Technically, we only needed a Lamb to die for our sins. In other words, technically, Jesus could have come to earth, lived a perfect life (maybe even for a year or two), and then somehow died for us. The OT animal sacrifice did not particularly suffer. Their throat was slit, their body died, and their blood was sprinkled on the altar. They did not beat, revile, and whip the lamb before they killed it.

But Jesus was beaten, Jesus was whipped, Jesus was reviled, Jesus was mocked, Jesus was spat upon, Jesus was declared a criminal, Jesus was nailed to a cross and suffered anguish as a curse upon the tree.

Jesus suffered for us. 

Not to save us from sin…that was accomplished through His death and resurrection.

But to save us from ourselves. To give us an example that we could follow. To be a great and merciful High Priest that we could trust in the midst of suffering. To be a Shepherd that we could follow through the difficult roads of unfair treatment, uncertain outcomes, undesirable circumstances.

We are to follow in His steps. 

Not giving in to our selfish nature when we face difficulty.

Not lying or manipulating to get our way in conflict.

Not yelling back in anger when we are verbally attacked.

Not threatening with hatred those we perceive as enemies.

But fully entrusting ourselves into God's hands, yielding to His will, trusting His justice, waiting on His timing, resting in His sovereignty, basking in His love, showing His grace to others.

This is a radical kind of life.

It is not something we can do on our own. It goes against every fiber of our self-focused nature. It requires the filling of the Spirit. It requires a kind of death in order to experience a new kind of life. 

But the good news is that our Savior and our Shepherd has gone before us…through the darkness, through the valley, through the suffering. We just have to trust Him and hold His hand as He leads us.

He is the only One who knows the way.

Posted in 1 Peter Devotionals | Leave a comment

Josh Duggar and Christian Hypocrisy

Posted on August 22, 2015 by Steve Foster

“I have been the biggest hypocrite ever. While espousing faith and family values, I have secretly over the last several years been viewing pornography on the internet and this became a secret addiction and I became unfaithful to my wife.” (Josh Duggar, 8/20/15)

Josh Duggar’s story is sad because it involves real people, especially a wife and four children, who will be impacted by his choices for many years to come.

It is sad because it is being played out in the lives of many other marriages and families across the nation as the Ashley Madison website list is exposed.

And it is sad because Josh Duggar associated himself so closely with the Christian faith and with Christian values that his actions have led many to latch onto his story as another glaring example of Christian hypocrisy.

“Look at all these Christians, who claim to be so moralistic and pure, falling left and right to the very sins that they condemn. What a bunch of hypocrites!”

I hate to say it, but they are right.

To preach “family values” and then practice the very things that destroy the family is the essence of hypocrisy. The Christian church has not earned much credibility in our culture when it comes to sexual purity.

The apostle Paul confronted the moralistic “God-fearers” of his day with the same charge:

You then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. For, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.” (Romans 2:21-24)

Here is the bottom line: There is no difference: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:22b-23).

If Josh Duggar’s story teaches us anything, it teaches us that we are no match for the sinful impulses, desires, and lusts of our own heart.

Sexual sin is powerful, pervasive, consuming, dominating, deceptive, destructive. What begins as a “small sin”…maybe even innocently…eventually becomes an addictive bondage. Though we claim to be in control, we soon lose control. Sin is not our slave. It is our master.

The sexual hedonist gives into his desires and pretends it is okay.

The sexual moralist gives into his desires and pretends he is okay.

Unfortunately the world only sees Christians as “sexual moralists.” And perhaps we have fed that image by focusing so much on preserving traditional sexual ethics in our society, by being so involved in political issues and debates. This is a difficult road for most Christians to walk as we live in a nation that calls its citizens to political involvement and freedom of speech.

How do you not say anything when a whole culture slides toward the deceptive lure of sexual freedom and the destruction of the stability of the family?

But as Christians involved in the public square we must always remember that it is a fine line between upholding the God-designed beauty and sanctity of sexuality and becoming a bunch of moralistic Pharisees.

It is a fine line between speaking the truth in love and preaching moralism in self-righteousness.

If our message as Christians is truly “good news,” then it must come from a heart that readily recognizes its own susceptibility and vulnerability to sin.

There but for the grace of God, go I.

It must be so rooted in God’s love that it doesn’t point at people but rather points them to the hope and healing that are only found in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Jesus alone has power over sin and over death. 

And it must be tied to a local body of believers that is vulnerable enough to admit sin and vigilant enough to help battle sin in community together.

Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul (1 Peter 2:11).

I weep for Josh Duggar. I weep for his family. And I weep for those who will use his story to justify their own indulgence in sin.

His story is not a cause for selfish celebration but rather sober reflection.

Sin is an enemy that I cannot fight on my own.

That’s why I need a power greater than my own.

And His name is still Jesus…despite what His followers may do.

Posted in Sex and Marriage | 3 Comments

Sex as Salvation

Posted on August 3, 2015 by Steve Foster

Ernest Becker wrote The Denial of Death in 1973. It won a Pulitzer Prize for its psychological insight and its honest assessment of life.

Becker’s basic premise is that, as humans, we are both blessed and cursed. Blessed with a conscious awareness of ourselves and of life…but at the same time cursed with an awareness of our weakness, insignificance, and mortality.

We are simultaneously worms and gods. Or to put it more graphically, we are gods with anuses (51).

This tension is too much to bear so we compensate by lying to ourselves, denying our own immortality, and creating systems and cultures in which we can find some sense of heroic significance (think of our present-day over-fascination with sports).

Another solution is what Becker calls the romantic solution (160).

The love relationship of modern man is a religious problem. …If you don’t have a God in heaven, an invisible dimension that justifies the visible one, then you take what is nearest at hand and work out your problems on that.

Is self-consciousness too painful, the sense of being a separate individual, trying to make some kind of meaning out of who one is, what life is, and the like? Then one can wipe it away in the emotional yielding to the partner, forget oneself in the delirium of sex, and still be marvelously quickened in the experience (162).

Without God, we look for a romantic relationship or a sexual experience to give us a sense of identity, significance, and meaning to life. Our love partner takes the place of God. And sex becomes a type of worship.

It becomes our religion. Our salvation.

This is not unique to our culture. Ancient societies have often idolized sex and made it into a god or goddess and worshiped at its altar.

After all, what is it that we want when we elevate the love partner to the position of God? We want redemption—nothing less. We want to be rid of our faults, of our feeling of nothingness. We want to be justified, to know that our creation has not been in vain (167).

We hunger for a sense of transcendence. We want to lose ourselves in something greater than ourselves…yet at the same time maintain our own identity. Sex and romance seem like an oasis in this lonely desert so we run toward them. Pursue them. Sing about them. Fantasize about them. Worship them.

But as Becker notes:

Sex is a “disappointing answer to life’s riddle,” and if we pretend that it is an adequate one, we are lying both to ourselves and to our children. …In this sense, “sex education” is a kind of wishful thinking, a rationalization, and a pretense: we try to make believe that if we give instruction in the mechanics of sex we are explaining the mystery of life. We might say that modern man tries to replace vital awe and wonder with a “how to do it” manual (164).

The sexual partner does not and cannot represent a complete and lasting solution to the human dilemma. …No wonder. How can a human being be a god-like “everything” to another? No human relationship can bear the burden of godhood, and the attempt has to take its toll in some way on both parties (165-166).

So when sex and romance disappoint, do we run toward God? No. We run after another relationship. And then another. Holding onto the illusion…to the lie…that if only I find the right person, or maybe even the right sexual identity or gender, then I will be satisfied.

But the hunger remains. And soon sex becomes just another addictive drug to numb the pain of life.

The spiritual burdens of the modern love relationship were so great and impossible on both partners that they reacted by completely despiritualizing or depersonalizing the relationship. The result is the Playboy mystique: over-emphasis on the body as a purely sensual object. If I can’t have an ideal that fulfills my life, then at least I can have guilt-free sex—so modern man seems to reason (168).

The progression is fairly obvious:

  • God is rejected.
  • I search for a substitute.
  • Sex becomes my god, my salvation.
  • When it disappoints, I search for another partner or another experience.
  • When this fails, I give up.
  • Sex becomes my drug, my addiction.
  • Eat, drink, and be merry because tomorrow I die.

As much as our culture worships, exalts, and seeks to promote sex without limits, it won’t satiate the thirst of our souls.

Becker concludes:

Redemption can only come from outside the individual, from beyond, from our conceptualization of the ultimate source of things, the perfection of creation. It can only come…when we lay down our individuality, give it up, admit our creatureliness and helplessness (168).

Becker sees the desperate condition of humanity. He sees our limits. Our lies. Our false gods. Our utter helplessness.

Yet he cannot see any solution.

Having given up on religion as another illusion, he simply has no place to turn.

The most that any one of us can seem to do is to fashion something—an object of ourselves—and drop it into the confusion, make an offering of it, so to speak, to the life force (285).

Becker ends his book worshiping at the altar of the Unknown God.

But this God has revealed Himself in real space-time history, in the person of Jesus Christ. And He can be known by those willing to humble themselves, admit their creatureliness and helplessness, and trust Him.

There is no other hope.

And no other salvation.

Posted in Sex and Marriage | 2 Comments

The Denial of God

Posted on July 7, 2015 by Steve Foster

Interesting quote from Ernest Becker's "The Denial of Death" (1973):

The Russians could not let go of Lenin even in death and so have entombed him as a permanent immortality-symbol. Here is a supposedly 'secular' society that holds pilgrimages to a tomb and that buries heroic figures in the 'sacred wall' of the Kremlin, a "hallowed" place.

No matter how many churches are closed or how humanistic a leader or a movement may claim to be, there will never be anything wholly secular about human fear. Man's terror is always 'holy terror.' Terror always refers to the ultimates of life and death.

An "enlightened" culture often thinks that it can dispose of God and live in humanistic freedom and security. There is no such thing. Ultimately a person has to confront his utter powerlessness before life and death and his fear of insignificance and non-existence. If we reject God, then we automatically erect another one to take His place. There is no escape. We either bow before Him in humility and gratitude or fight against Him in our self-deluded pride.

I have bowed before the Lord Jesus Christ because He is the only One who has demonstrated unimaginable love in taking on human flesh to die for me and unconquerable power in defeating death by rising from the dead.

Who's your Lord?

Posted in Random Thoughts | Leave a comment