Welcome to Standing in the Gates

I know it is a scary thought. I know it is outside ourcomfort zone. And so at best we pray for those who go, those spiritualsuper-heroes that are better than we are. At worst we get angry at them formaking us feel guilty. Going to the mill, however, will not save your soul,will not assuage your guilt. Jesus did that. If you will go, however, you willno longer fear, but will know that He is with you, wherever you go. Here thenare five reasons you should go, pray, speak.

First, you should go to feel the power of repentance. Thereis no place, outside the Lord’s Table, more powerful in demonstrating the depthof our sin. Though I am actively pro-life I go and repent for these things.First, for my country. I am a part of this country and so share in its guilt.While we should always and everywhere be grateful for all the blessings wereceive, going to a mill cures my head-in-the-sand, proud-to-be-an-Americanfolly. Instead I am rightly ashamed. I am a citizen of a nation that over thelast forty years has murdered fifty million babies. Second, for His church. Iam a part of His church and so share in its guilt.  We are like the Christians of Germany duringthe Holocaust, except these victims are murdered in plain sight. Again, thoughI am to be grateful for how the grace of God is manifest in and through Hischurch, being at the mill cures me of the foolish notion that the church isinnocent, that the battle between the seed of the woman and the seed of theserpent is an “out there” thing rather than an “in here” thing. Third, I repentfor myself. Being there never cleanses me from my guilt. I cannot stand thereand pray, “I thank you God that I am not like other men. I preach at mills andadopt babies.” Instead I weep for my forgetting, and for my not doing enough.

Second, you should go to experience the power of the devil.Non-charismatic evangelicals are unhealthily skittish about the reality ofspiritual warfare. We are practical modernists, believing the invisible realmdoesn’t touch this realm. You cannot make that mistake at a killing center. Thesense of demonic presence is oppressive, weighty.  Never is that power greater than whenproclaiming Jesus to those leading their little ones to death. The devildoesn’t take well to our kneeling before His gates.

Third, you should go to experience the power of conviction.The devil has persuaded Christians and non-Christians that this “procedure” isnormal, no big deal. When you are there, without even a spoken word, you arecommunicating to yourself and others these great truths- that what they areabout to do is wicked; that what they are about to do is noticed; that whatthey are about to do is not normal; that what they are about to do they willregret. When Christians especially show up to murder their babies, they seeJesus in you and often they turn around, repenting.

Fourth, you should go to experience the power of the HolySpirit. Again, evangelicals, especially Reformed evangelicals, are skittishabout the Holy Spirit. We are willing to speak of Him in the abstract, but wedon’t expect to witness Him at work. He does work, and nowhere more visiblythan at the very gates of hell. The Spirit does great things when we follow Himinto great battles.  He tears down strongholdsbefore our very eyes.

Fifth, you should go to experience the power of family. Whenyou are there to watch fathers and mothers murder their babies you cannot helpbut give thanks that He spared your children, to rejoice that they survived thebattle of the womb. When you are there together with your family, you enjoy theblessings of all of the above, together. You will go home united, tearful, andgrateful.

You need to go. You don’t need to preach, though you may.You don’t need to carry a sign, though you may. You don’t need to hand outtracts, though you may. But you must go. I have met many who regret not going.I know no one who has ever regretted going. Show them Jesus, and you will seeJesus at work.

I am frankly astonished that the worship wars rattle on. The army of praise choruses, light shows and worship bands have left the Psalms, the organ, and our father’s hymnal decimated. The war for all practical purposes ended quite some time ago, and I am on the losing side. It is now harder to find a church that hasn’t bought into contemporary worship than it is to find a church has never been through a split. The landscape is littered with the meeting places of the victors.

So why bother with the question? Because there are a few battle-scarred, dazed, war survivors out there wondering what happened.

What happened is that we fought with the wrong weapons, and naturally lost. We objected to the drums and the guitars for at least two bad reasons. First, because we associated them with a rebellious rock culture, we thought they didn’t belong in church, though they did belong in our living rooms.  We couldn’t keep them out of the sanctuary because we welcomed them into the rest of our lives. While not everything in our work week rightly fits on the Sabbath (work, for instance), Sunday is not the day wherein we are supposed to be good, and the other days when we are free to be bad. So if they are bad, drums and guitars, let them be bad. If they are not bad in themselves (which I would argue) then let’s not object on the basis that they seem bad to us, or that they are often used by bad people.

The second reason was rather unspoken. Too many of the soldiers on our side objected to meeting the felt needs of others in the church not because felt needs are unimportant, but because it means our felt needs are not getting met. If the music with which we worship is decided by popular vote, some of us with unpopular tastes are going to lose. But if our argument in favor of our tastes is that they are our tastes, we can’t expect to win. If everyone agrees we should get what we want, there is no use protesting when they are we and we are on the losing side.

My objection to drums and guitars is not that they are drums and guitars. Few traditionalists would object to kettle-drums. Few would object to all instruments wherein tight bands of steel are struck. That, after all, is what a piano does. The issue isn’t the instruments, but the music. The war did not end when fifty one percent of churches embraced contemporary worship. It ended when we bought into the devil’s lie that forms don’t matter, just thoughts; that media carries no message; that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  It ended when we determined to watch the lyric front, but give up the music front.

It’s true the evil isn’t in the instrument; it’s in us. Our worship problems do not flow from drums and guitars. They flow from the sad truth that we are shallow, insipid, easily played, safe, boring and sentimental.  Jesus, remember, didn’t throw the money out of the temple, but the money-changers.

It is a subtle, but important distinction. I approve the desire to think God’s thoughts after Him. I fear though that I am sometimes tempted to approve God’s thoughts only when they agree with mine. A few weeks ago during a Question and Answer time at Ligonier’s annual conference I honestly answered a question as to my views on the age of the earth. I’m a young earth guy. Have been for twenty years. Though there were other young earth guys on the panel, and all the gentlemen on the panel are in my judgment fine, godly men, I found myself humbled by the enthusiastic support of the young earthers in the crowd, as if I had taken some sort of odd, bold and prophetic stand.

Despite my respect for those with whom I disagree on this issue, it is difficult not to fear that those on the other side weigh the Bible too lightly, and what they are hearing in His revelation through His creation too heavily.  I know they don’t intend that. They may not even be guilty. But I am at least guilty of finding it less than easy to maintain toward them a presumption of their innocence.

What troubles me more, however, is when my comrades within the young earth camp (and please let’s all remember that these “camps” are all together within the walls of the kingdom) make the same kind of mistake. I fear that too many of us embrace young earth creationism not because of the dependability of the Bible, but because of the fine scientific work of those in the young earth camp.

I’ve seen and been blessed by the work of several “creation” ministries. Insofar as they are about the business of thinking God’s thoughts after Him, all I have is praise. Indeed I suspect my concerns reflect not those who produce pro-young earth teaching, but those who receive such teaching. If a stunning slide show about Mount Saint Helens persuades you that the Bible is true, that’s a problem. If a compelling video about the Great Flood convinces you there was a Great Flood, that’s a problem. The problem is your ultimate allegiance is to stunning slide shows and compelling videos.

Of course because the Bible is true we should expect His revelation in creation to match right up. Because there was a world-wide flood we should expect to find evidence of a world-wide flood. But we should not conclude that there was a world wide flood because our studies affirm such. Instead we’re supposed to believe the Bible.

Now it may well be that we young earthers are the geo-centrists of our day. It may well be that the best, most faithful understanding of Genesis is a Framework view, or some other view that requires an old earth. In short, I could be wrong. Geology, however, biology, astro-physics will not be how I come to know I am wrong. It would take the Bible to do that.

God is true wherever He speaks, whether in His Word or His world. Both natural and special revelation are inerrant and infallible. Only one of them, however, is clear, forthright, straightforward. Before we wrestle over this vexing issue, may we all learn to agree with two things. First, whatever the Bible teaches, that is what we are going to believe. And second, we are going to believe it because the Bible teaches it. 

There is a certain type of four fingered writer who always keeps one finger to the wind and five fingers wrapped around the reigns of his hobby-horse. Their self-perceived gift is to take the story of the day, and tie it into the one story that has already captured their heart. Every major news story becomes the occasion to saddle up and ride into the one story the writer can’t give up. Somehow the death of Princess Di, the plight of the Chilean coal-miners, Tebowing, Kony and Trayvon Martin all, in their due time, point out the obvious, that the President is a bad man, or women should dress more modestly, or the Fed needs to be audited, or raw milk is good for you.

I am aware of this tendency among writers because, believe it or not, I fight that tendency.  I am mildly aware of what everyone in the world is talking about. I am acutely aware of the one public issue that dominates, though not as much as it should, my own thinking. I in turn am quick to see the connections between the two. Sometimes I fight the temptation to connect the two, sometimes I give in.

When I give in the connection is usually the same. I write a piece in which I ask, “Hey, why is the world so busy talking about x, when my issue is so much more important, so much more compelling? Why are Christians at every office water cooler talking about the media’s talking points, instead of my talking points?” I feel guilty for turning what is often a genuine tragedy of a news story into fodder for my cause.

Today, however, I am persuaded that my habit is the result of our deep disease on this issue. That is, I suspect that all of us would rather talk about today’s story rather than the story precisely because the story is too intense, too revealing, too much a window into the grave evil of the goats and the deep cowardice of the sheep. We would rather talk about Kony than abortion, Trayvon than abortion, even Susan G. Komen than abortion because we are less guilty over all these than we are over abortion. We can look into these comparatively distant, petty horrors because they are both distant and comparatively petty. Abortion, however, is as guilty and horror-filled as hell.

I understand that we all have different callings. I do not begrudge a man bringing the gospel to India rather than laboring to stop the slaughter here in America. I wouldn’t complain about a pastor counseling a young married couple, rather than gathering signatures for the Personhood Amendment. I am positively grateful for godly men who repair plumbing problems instead of carrying picket signs. What troubles me, however, is that away from our specific callings, we find the time to discuss the news, even to pontificate on the news, while the murder of babies has become old news. The murder of babies is backburner, boring, banal, as common as sin. This does not excuse our guilt, but exposes it. Darkness has come into the world and we perceive it not. We are called, all of us, to shine the light of Christ into the darkest corners of the world. May we begin with our own hearts.

We could, in the spirit of political correctness, suggest that such a question is out of bounds. We could affirm that everyone is special in their own way, and protect the self-esteem of the supers. On the other hand, we could have a debate over the right criteria by which to judge. Are we asking who has the coolest super-power? Who has the best alter ego? Whose transformation story is the most compelling? Indeed once one finds the proper criteria by which to judge, the answers just seem to come naturally.

I have two competing criteria that I value highly. Not wanting to choose I will therefore divide the question in two, affirming which is the greatest classic super-hero and which is the greatest modern superhero. First the classic.

By classic I mean those supers whose beginnings came in the heyday of the comic book. Here we find some astonishing super-powers, some engaging alter egos, and some compelling back stories. The best standard, I would argue, however, is this- who makes the most of what he’s got? Which means, of course, that Batman wins, hands down. Batman, frankly, has no super-powers. He is not from another planet, or a lost civilization.  He has not been infected with radiation, nor visited by ancient gods. No, Batman fights with his wealth, his wits and his will. The first two, wealth and wits, create the technology that is so vital to his battle plan. It is his iron will, however, that brings it all together. Criminals fear him not because of what he can do, but because of what he wants- justice.  In the first “battle” of the first modern movie account Batman holds a terrified petty criminal over the edge of a skyscraper. The terrified thug squeaks out, “What are you?” And Batman had me at “I’m Batman, and I want you to tell all your friends about me.”

I’m not the most physically gifted man in the world. I never was growing up. But I have always been competitive. Will means quite a bit to me, and so Batman receives one crown.  On the other hand, as a dad raising eight children I have in recent years come to see the heroism called for in leading a family. Most supers are socially awkward, isolated, islands. One modern hero, however, exhibits the greatest of virtues- he loves his wife and children. Indeed he loves his wife and children enough to endure the crushing weight of hiding his super-ness.  Mr. Incredible wins my vote in the modern category not because of his astonishing super gifts, but because of his ordinary and therefore inspiring love for his family.  I want not to be like his super-identity, but his alter ego, for that, in this instance, is not only who he really is, but who he really wants to be.

In the real world we value the wrong things. We value skills over drive, abilities over willingness. We think our job rather than our family is our calling.  Which is why it’s good to have heroes, but why we have to choose them with care. 

My wife would be pleased with me. As I do far too infrequently, I uncluttered my desk today. You should see how nice it looks. In so doing, however, I came across another old stack of sympathy cards sent months ago from friends and strangers. I read through them, and found myself lonesome for a surprising time, the day my Denise went on to glory. In a previous piece I wrote about how, crossing the barrier of forty days of mourning made me fear that I would miss Denise all the more. I suggested that the more I mourned the more it seemed she was with me. Turns out I was right.

As I read through those cards I was taken back to that first day. Denise passed very early on Sunday morning, December 18^th. After taking care of necessary details in the nursing facility I headed home to tell my children. After we talked and cried and hugged I got myself cleaned up, and headed off the church. My thought was that what I needed most of all at that moment was to meet with Jesus, and to be reminded of His grace, His gospel. Turns out I was right.

As I sat there that morning however, I didn’t have the sense that she had left me. Indeed I felt more like we were going to go through this together, that she would walk me through my mourning. She would speak to me the words of life. She would hold me when I could not sleep. She would encourage me to do the next thing. She would remind me to give thanks. Though I do not pretend to know if she sees me. I believed she would make certain that I sensed her with me.  Turns out I was right.

As I look back on that morning, however, somehow now I look back alone. Of course I still cry. I still mourn, even as I type. I miss her laughter, her hand, her beautiful eyes. But somehow as time moves on what I end up missing is the comfort and closeness she somehow gave even after she had gone.  She doesn’t sit beside me when I’m alone in the car anymore. She doesn’t look over my shoulder when I am typing and crying alone anymore. Somehow the more time passes, the farther she is gone, not because I am forgetting her, but because I am remembering her. The great heartbreak is that she is now becoming my past, rather than my ever present.

Denise was carried by Jesus out of the valley of the shadow of death. She now dances with Him on the mountain of the lightness of life.  She has, rightly, wisely, and through the very love of our Savior, left me. And I feel lost. By His grace, however, I have a path to follow. For His pieced feet leave bloody prints all the way out of the valley, all the way up the mountain. I will follow Him, who promised to be with me, even until the end of the age. He is a blessed man to dance with her. I am a blessed man to follow Him.

Because there is such a great divide between the city of God and the city of man, though both occupy the same space, it is not always easy to judge how the battle is going.  To compare the sweetest, most joy filled full-quiver homeschooling family with the most dysfunctional broken family hardly seems fair. That’s because it isn’t fair, though it is equally unfair to compare the government educated spiritual super-hero evangelist with the meth making family that “homeschools” only because such a claim might keep the government at bay.

The hard truth is that the unbelievers’ best sometimes looks a lot more honorable than the believers’ worst. But the more honest question is, how are each of us doing in the middle? Is the average professing Christian living a more God-honoring life than the average unbeliever? In short, yes.

Tonight I attended a celebration of a couple that has been married for fifty years. This couple belongs to a church that was less than fundamentalist, less than conservative. This couple had three children, and sent them all to the government schools, all the way through college.  When the children were young the mom stayed home while the dad earned a living to support the family. 

Compare this ordinary but God-honoring faithfulness with the average unbelieving family. Is it likely that this family is untouched by adultery, divorce, drug abuse? Is it likely that this family is even still a family? Forty percent of children in America are born to unmarried moms.  Another 1.2 million are murdered by their moms. Forty percent of marriages end in divorce. Government dependence, crushing debt, dysfunctional families, substance abuse are average in the average modern family.

The point is not, of course, that Christians are by themselves better people than non-Christians. “Such once were we” is something Christians must never forget.  Nor should we ever lose sight of our continuing struggles with sin. Rather such a comparison actually demonstrates this truth- as the Christian faith becomes an alternate culture rather than shaping the broader culture, decadence in the broader culture will be defined downward. The Greatest Generation were not all Christian. But they knew what it meant to sacrifice for others. My parents’ generation were not all Christians, but they knew a thing or two about commitment.

One of the blessings of a culture leaving the Christian faith is it becomes increasingly difficult to confuse cultural Christianity and the genuine article. Christians have to choose between being normal and being Christian. One of the great disadvantages is watching our neighbors in Babylon create such spectacular car crashes with their lives.  Worse still is when they crash into our lives.

Our culture is in rapid decline. That decline is more likely to increase rather than reverse. Being salt and light includes preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. It includes loving our neighbors, without identifying with them.  It means looking like oranges in a world full of apples. It means also, however, living in peace and quietness with all men, as much as is possible. When a man honors the wife of his youth, when he saves rather than spends, when he commits his time and energy to his children, the beauty of the reign of Jesus Christ shines forth.

Three things. The first is to give thanks. Like most clichés, this one became a cliché because it is a powerful and pithy truth- I cried for having no shoes, until I met a man with no legs. This does not mean that all of us should find one person who is having a harder time than we are, and all of us, save one, the winner of the Job of the Moment award, would perk up. And when the winner loses his title for some other Job, he can begin to cheer up. Rather it reminds us that we all have much for which we should be grateful.  Being joyful for what we have doesn’t tempt us to rest on our laurels, but motivates us to act, to get up and fulfill our calling. If we are in Christ and are ungrateful, we are being blinded.

Which brings us to the second thing we ought to do- repent and believe the gospel. We should in fact be ashamed when we are overcome with that “pull the sheets over our head” feeling. Jesus told us that His yoke is easy, His burden light. When we are feeling overwhelmed we are calling Him a liar. Having faced our failure, having entered into our shame, however, we move quickly to believing the gospel. Jesus died for our shameful feelings. He died for our calling Him a liar. And He not only forgives us, but loves us with an everlasting love. He knows everything there is to know about us, including those sins we can’t even face ourselves, and still, He loves us.

This, of course, brings us back to step one. That is, as we believe the gospel, we once again must give thanks.

The last step is as simple and easy as the first two-I must do the first thing on my list. When it is done, I must do the next thing on our list. Of course, when we give thanks, when we repent and believe the gospel, we notice a few things about our list. It begins to shrink. What we discover is that the more we are persuaded that we have all that we could ever want or imagine in Christ Jesus we discover we don’t need to do this or do that to try to satisfy our souls.

All that ought to remain on our list is loving our neighbors. That may mean doing dishes, or folding laundry, but when we do these chores we are actually loving our neighbors. We are serving them.

Since my wife passed I am constantly asked how I am doing. I am so grateful for people’s concerns. The truth is I do have a long to-do list, even without my honey making me honey-do lists. I also feel the weight of the sorrow of missing her that beckons me to spend the day in bed. I can’t, however, curl up in a ball because of my life’s work. I have eight children to care for, children who miss their mom every bit as much as do. For all my sadness over the loss of my wife, I yet have what we have made, by His grace, together, these precious children. They need their dad more than I need a day in bed. In loving, in serving them, my wounds begin to heal and I am reminded I am not a man without shoes looking at children without feet. I am instead the richest man in the world, because of the children who are my, and His heirs. Give thanks. Repent. Believe the gospel. And get to work.

Because I am pridefully averse to jumping on both cultural and sub-cultural bandwagons, I have only just today watched the Kony video. Like everyone else, I was appalled at the great evil of this one man. Like everyone else, I wept with Jacob over his lost brother. Like everyone else I not only wanted Kony stopped, but wanted to help. As the father of eight children there are few things that pierce my crusty exterior than when children are so badly treated. These children, thirty-thousand of them so far, have been taken away from their parents. The girls have been turned into sexual playthings, the boys turned into child-killers.

One need not, however, have a potent imagination to conjure an evil greater still. One need not have an imagination at all. One need only walk down ones own street. There is no Kony in America. There are instead 1800 men and women in this country alone, far more evil, far more perverse than Kony. These 1800 do not steal children from their parents. Instead, the parents, over a million of them every year, give their children freely. Indeed they pay to have them taken away. These 1800 do not turn the girls into sexual playthings, though they do help ensure their moms can continue to be sexual playthings. They do not turn the boys into child-killers. Instead they are child killers, mutilating little unborn babies to pieces.

That the world has been dutifully outraged over Kony’s outrage is not, I’m sorry to conclude, a hopeful sign. I did not come away from the film either discouraged by the evil of men like Kony, nor encouraged by the goodness of those who wish to stop him. I came away sick to my stomach. How many of those earnest young people, I wonder, have murdered their own children? How many of them would show the same passion for protecting their “reproductive rights?” Worse still, how many people like me, convinced Christian pro-lifers, will wear the Kony bracelet, but won’t ask their pastor to preach against the greatest evil of our day? How many people like me, convinced Christian pro-lifers, will be swayed by the magic of viral internet marketing to “get involved” on Kony, who at the same time are embarrassed when hard-core pro-lifers carry around pictures of aborted babies?

Kony, to the minds of most evangelicals, is a war criminal. Abortion, in the minds of most evangelicals, is a political issue. Kony must be stopped in 2012. Abortion, well, we’ll just keep voting in moderately pro-life politicians, hoping they might appoint moderately pro-life judges who might one day hear a case that might one day put a dent in Roe v. Wade that one day might be overturned, but not, thank goodness, until our daughters are all safely married.

There is great evil in the world- an evil that responds with polite, hushed tones to well-heeled white people, living in our neighborhoods, who murder babies for a living. And there is a great evil in me, that I accept this.