Learning to care

Students at H. Grady Spruce High School in Dallas used to wear a button on their chests. It had an image of the mascot in the center and two simple words – “I Care.”
Those of us who wore those buttons in the early 1970s were trying to tell the world that we knew life was not just about ourselves. I still have one of those buttons sitting on my dresser almost 40 years later. It’s a reminder to me of the kind of person I want to be, of the kind of person I believe God wants me to become.
I’m so thankful my parents, church and school taught me to care and modeled it. We need more such teaching and modeling today.
Jesus was the ultimate caring person. He met all kinds of needs – physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. He was not a fawning do-gooder; He was a strong-minded and strong-principled man who confronted evil and proclaimed peace, hope and love. He cared so much that He lived strong and died for the weak – us.
A Jesus revival is needed today. Such a revival of spirit will see more people taking on the mantle of Jesus as they walk through this 21st century world. And if we are revived, we will care like He cared – with strength and with a willingness to sacrifice for those who are weak.
Spruce High School also had a motto that was fixed in tile in the main foyer – “Everybody is Somebody.” Only when we know that, will we really care. Everybody. Literally everybody is somebody in God’s eyes. Shame on me when I see the clothes and think I know the man, when I see the house and think I know the family, when I see the smile and think I know the life.
I want to care. God wants me to care. God wants all of us who call ourselves by His Son’s name to care – to care for everybody, because everybody is somebody.

A Glorious Day

This is the beginning of a glorious day in American history. Barack Obama will be sworn in today as the first African-American president in our history.

I am so proud to experience this day. I remember the racism of childhood growing up in Dallas, so this is just an amazing day.

I'm in a hurry to go to an appointment, but I just had to start the day with a post. I pray God's blessings on Mr. Obama, his family, our nation and our world.

The importance of compassion

This weekend I've been going through magazines that have stacked up the past few years in a desire to get them to the recycle bin. One of those mags is the March-April 2005 edition of Utne.

In an article titled "God Alert: Karen Armstrong Wants to Warn the World of a Looming Religious Storm" author Michael Valpy reflects an interview he had with Armstrong regarding religious fundamentalism. One quote from Armstrong especially caught my attention.

"Compassion is the key to religion, the key to spirituality. ... It is the litmus test of religiosity in all the major world religions. It is the key to the experience of what we call God--that when you dethrone yourself from the center of your world and put another there, you achieve extasis, you go beyond yourself."

Valpy then said Armstrong quoted the Buddha, who said, "First, live in a compassionate way, and then you will know."

I really did not grow up being taught that compassion is the key to my religion--Christian of the Southern Baptist variety--but I do think this is right if you genuinely seek to follow Christ. And the good thing about compassion is that it inoculates you against the hideous effects of religious fundamentalism, which Jesus battled and which Southern Baptists followed.

But in saying that, maybe I'm not being compassionate toward Southern Baptists. Compassion, in seems, is not an easy thing.

Serving people in the name of Christ

Yesterday, I asked my Sunday School class to join me in prayer. I've been teaching this wonderful class for almost eight years. I have a sense that it's time for me to say goodbye to this responsibility, that our current study of the Gospel of Matthew should be my last.

I really haven't finally made up my mind, and I really do value prayer. I did a similar thing in Virden, Illinois, when I thought my time as co-pastor was coming to an end. I just believe that decision regarding church service should be participated in by the community involved.

We stand alone before God in ultimate responsibility for the lives we live, but we stand together as community in seeking to live this life faithfully.

Sustaining the RNC

I received my annual blue and gold "Sustaining Member" card from the Republican National Committee today. If I'm sustaining the RNC, then it is in trouble.

The RNC hasn't gotten any money out of me in a couple of years, but it sends me a new card each year that says I'm a member since 2002. I stopped giving as my doubts about the party began to rise. And when I did give, it was only at about $25 or $50 a year. So that made me a Sustaining Member. I wonder what the good givers get called.

I receive mailings all the time from the committee. A few months ago, I returned it and said I will not start giving until the GOP gets serious about campaign finance reform -- no money included. I'm sure that hand-written message from a Sustaining Member went straight to the RNC chairman.

But it's not just campaign finance report, other issues that are important to me include the following:
-- Environment (save it now)
-- Iraq (bad war, bad decisions)
-- American jobs (they're just as important as corporate profits)

You get it. I'm sounding more and more like a Democrat every day. But I have my complaints with them, as well.

As for right now, I'm sustaining no one, at least not a political party.

Overwhelming Importance

Some things to think about from Alfred North Whitehead, writing in 1925 in the preface to Science and the Modern World:

"This study has been guided by the conviction that the mentality of an epoch springs from the view of the world which is, in fact, dominant in the educated sections of the communities in question." (p. viii)

Philosophy "builds cathedrals before the workmen have moved a stone, and it destroys them before the elements have worn down their arches. It is the architect of the buildings of the spirit, and it is also their solvent: --and the spiritual precedes the material." (pp. viii-ix)

"The key to the book is the sense of the overwhelming importance of a prevalent philosophy." (p. x)

I have at times feared philosophy, but I love it -- what little I have dabbled in it. It is about knowing, and knowing can be scary, but it is also rewarding.

I love Whitehead's line: "the spiritual precedes the material." I fear we do to little spiritual or philosophical thinking.

Learning to be on God's Team

I work with some great people, the Communications Team of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. We're having a retreat this week, a time for us to get connected and become a true team providing service to the BGCT and its churches. Even though I'm the director of this team, I've stayed in the background this week and have let the others lead. They said some things about being a team that I really like. Here's some of their paraphrased comments so far:

Looie Biffar: The best way to say "thank you" to God is to use your gifts.

Shirley Smith: One would think that Jesus, of all people, would need a team. ... But He did -- His disciples.

Glenn Majors: In relationship building we are constructing an uncommon unity.

Glenn: Harvest the boldness that is within you.

Glenn: Make what is inside come out.

Rand Jenkins: We do this because we love God.

Jason Hilliard: I felt the heat of the candle (referring to a candle that represented the presence of God in a spiritual labyrinth). ... The more I thought about that verse, the less I wanted to leave that spot (which represented the presence of God).

I'm a fortunate man to work with such people.

Endless Conversion

“Remember that you are weak, that you, too, need endless conversion. You are able to strengthen others only insofar as you are aware of your own weakness.”

Those are the words of the late Pope John Paul II. I picked them up from Richard John Neuhaus writing in the January 1995 issue of First Things. The Pope said it was as if Jesus wanted to give that message to the Peter. Those of us who would be modern-day Peters -- read Christian leaders -- would do well to heed such advice.

Salvation is Divine

More from Iain H. Murray: "... the salvation of souls ... is not finally determined by our efforts." (Pentecost - Today? p. 11)

Yes, Murray is a Calvinist, but he's not a hyper one. He recognizes that Scripture clearly says followers of Christ have a responsibility to share the good news. But while hyper-Calvinists make one mistake, others, let's call them hyper-evangelists, make another. They basically reduce the salvation of souls to a rote process of cause and effect -- if believers do this and that, then revival will invariably come. It doesn't. Murray deals with this well, citing both Scripture and general experience.

Murray quotes Theodore L. Cuyler: "God always means to be God. He bestows spiritual blessings when he pleases, how he pleases, and where he pleases. We may labour, we may pray, we may 'plant', but we must not dictate." (p. 12)

I'm not a Calvinist, but I sure love the importance they place on the sovereignty of God.

We should work, pray and plant; but we should always remember that it is the work of the Holy Spirit to save. There is no magic formula that we can concoct to produce one salvation, much less a revival.

In short, salvation is divine, in more ways than one.